


Clay

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Chirrut/Obi is very understated and short, Jedha mythology, M/M, Minor Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, Whills mythology, differences in Force understanding, some dragging of the Jedi, we are certainly not explicit yet but that will occur before the story is done, weird Force relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-08-09 05:38:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 95,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16443908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: The rumor goes out from one end of the universe to the other: the Whills has created a monster.It begins with clay.





	1. The Fable

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is, the Frankenstein/golem AU that no one wanted until I mentioned it and it became a NaNo. In preparation for doing Part II as this year's NaNo, I'm going to start posting Part I a chapter at a time. Please keep in mind that this work is not completed so tags and warnings might get updated as we go. I suggest checking those as we go so you don't manage to stumble into something you don't want to read.

Chirrut Imwe knows the stories, all the initiates of the Whills do, but that does not mean he believes them. Jedha is a moon of myths and legends, the stories and murmurings of so many cultures tied and twisted together that they make up the moorings of their home as much as the shards of kyber found below its surface, as much as the curling, twisting strands of the Force that linger through and in everything around them, the universe itself. You cannot go twenty paces without hearing a song or a fable spun by some grandmother, children repeating the words of their people in their play. The bricks and pillars of NiJedha resonate with all the collected words, captured in the clay and the sand. So many languages and cultures and beliefs woven together on one moon that it becomes hard to tell what parts of the tapestry are truth and what parts never could have existed at all.

Chirrut has been with the Whills since he was young. It is all he knows. This is not so uncommon on Jedha. Lots of families give their children to the Whills when they are born, bring them to the temple gates before their memories of home fully cement. It is thought to be a blessing to live in the temple, to sing with the Force, and feel the kyber resonate and thrum beneath your feet. It is thought to be a gift for your family to be the galaxy, for your parents and siblings to not have to worry about how to take care of you.

No one is rich on Jedha, but the Whills comes the closest. They, at least, can sustain themselves, Masters, Guardian, and the ever-expanding horde of Initiates alike thanks to the kyber cave, the Jedi who seek the crystals, and the pilgrims who flock to the Whills, coming from every tucked away part of the universe to see and hear and learn from the Force believers. Some of the pilgrims bring extravagant gifts: money or food, priceless antiques, herds of banthas and other livestock. Some of them bring lesser gifts that are no less cherished and adored: loth kittens, books, seeds for trees and flowers that do not grow on Jedha, chunks of rock that mean nothing except to those who hold them. Chirrut has seen many gifts come into the temple and has watched some of them leave, sold off to merchants in order to make the lives of the residents better. Some, though, most in fact, of the gifts remain in the temple, either displayed around the halls and rooms or tucked into storage areas for later or just so that a piece of the questing pilgrim can remain when nothing else does.

One of the tenets of the Whills is posterity. The Whills have stood for ages. The Whills will stand for ages. The universe may shake and tremble, the galaxy may change, stand and stretch like a giant roused from slumber to destroy everything in its wake, people will die and be born, souls will flow back into the Force, but the Whills will remain. Like the Force. They are one and the same. They are the living, breathing, speaking voice of the Force.

(Not the Jedi. Never the Jedi. These are words that are said, whispered, pressed into the hands and ears of every initiate who passes through the gates whether old or young. The Jedi are not leaves in the flow of the Force, they do not let it take them where it will. They are like stones, purposefully plopped down to subvert and reroute the water, to put it where they want it to be, twisted for their own purposes, broken into a light side and a dark side as though energy, as though the lifeblood of the universe has a purpose, has a goal, does anything other than exist to be felt and to be heeded. They shout instead of listen, voices raised in a cacophony that allows no sound to be uttered by anyone, anything else. While the Whills bends, moves, the Jedi push, pull and then shriek when something does not follow their plan. And they have outlawed feelings, attachments, as though connection is the enemy. As though a heart hurting does not need a hand to hold. They wonder why their own wander to the “dark side” when they refuse to heal them when they refuse to let them heal themselves. No one is all good. No one is all evil. The Whills have long since stopped trying to pass along these truths to the Jedi, though. They never hear. They have not heard for so long, their ears full of their own code. Their minds set on twisting the world to their own goal.)

Chirrut has heard the whisperings behind the closed doors, the voices of the elders low in discussion, the way they debate whether or not it is a good idea to continue selling the kyber to their lost cousins, which are the words they use for the Jedi when they are not around. Is it right to benefit from the way they twist and shame and coerce the Force? Is it just to allow them to continue? Does the good of providing for the temple, for Jedha itself, outweigh the bad of perpetuating the abuse of the Force? It is a moral quandary with little answer, and Chirrut, young and impetuous, grows tired of the endless ethical debate and abandons his eavesdropping before a verdict, if any, is reached. All he knows is that the kyber continues to be mined, polished, shipped so they must have decided that it balances, that is it worth it. He does not question it himself; he is too young for all of that.

What he is not too young for are the quiet circles of huddled Initiates swapping stories back and forth long into the night. Jedha is cold, and they are wrapped in blankets pulled from beds, sitting on the mats in one of the training rooms, furtively whispering to one another, always with someone posted to keep an eye out for the night Guardians who wander the halls, stalwart protectors of them all but also tasked with the chore of shooing the young ones back to bed if they are found wandering.

“Monsters roam the streets of NiJedha at night. Monsters with horns and giant teeth as sharp as any blade. They snuff at corners, prying, trying to get in and eat children,” Lanzo says, voice pitched low, eyes blown wide. “That’s the noise you hear at night at the walls, at the windows. It’s the monsters sniffing out your blood.” He makes a series of exaggerated inhaling noises as though scenting all of them, leaning close to a girl who pushes at his shoulder while giggling slightly too high because of nerves.

“The noise is just the wind,” Tezzee corrects, and all of the children groan. “It is. It’s just the wind. When it blows through the windows, it makes that noise, trapped in the halls, like whispering, like shouting. It’s not monsters or ghosts or anything else you want to call it. It’s just the wind.”

“We shouldn’t have invited you,” Lanzo says, running a hand over the short tendrils that sprout like vines from his head. “You’re no fun at all.”

“Maybe it is the wind,” Chirrut cuts in, trying to salvage the night before it’s ruined and everyone’s feelings are hurt. “But what creates the wind? Maybe that’s the monsters breathing? Or the spirits as they move past the temple walls? Blowing all that air in as they displace it.”

Tezzee scrunches their face up, eyes dark green slits in their orange colored face. “No, no. That’s not how it works. It’s about atmospheric pressure and…” Groans start to rise from the others, shuffling, the group preparing to abandon the circle instead of being regaled on the truth of meteorological facts.

“What about the Force creations!” Myek pipes up, and all eyes turn to her.

“What?” Chirrut asks because he has never heard of this before, and he prides himself on knowing about the Force. After all, he can hear it. Kind of. In a whispery, wind in the trees sort of way, a knowing deep in his belly that pulls him this way and that sometimes. And the kyber. Oh. Chirrut knows that the kyber sings. He is sensitive, the Masters have said, and the other Initiates in the temple tend to either look at him in awe or roll their eyes at him in a mixture of jealousy and disbelief. He does not have to go far to hear their taunts. (“You’re not so special, Imwe.” “Don’t let it go to your head.” “Lucky guess.” “Look, it’s the Jedi boy. Remember. The Jedi are wrong.”)

Even he, however, has not heard of Force creations. Not from the Masters or the Guardians or the hundreds of manuscripts he has poured through, mostly paid attention to, or from the Force itself, though that one doesn’t surprise him as much because it’s not like it talks talks. Not in words. Not in anything that is very useful at all. Most of the time, he thinks that he would prefer it if it would stop letting him hear it. Life might be simpler then. He might be accepted then instead of feeling just a little on the outside of things.

Myek looks proud, her dark eyes glimmering as she smiles and then leans forward, elbows positioned on her knees as she pointedly looks at each of them in turn. “The Force creations. They say that you can make a man out of clay and if you wish hard enough the Force will bring it to life.” Her voice takes on a low raspy quality until she says life sharply, the word falling out of her mouth like a stone.

The others look impressed, but Chirrut just frowns. He knows that the Force can do many things, is in all things, is in the clay and the rocks and the sands of Jedha, is in the wind. The Force is the life of the universe, the Masters say, the books say, their lessons say, but this seems far-fetched. The Force is in all things. The Force is life. The clay is already alive in the Force. Why would it need to be altered? It feels like Jedi tampering. “Who says?” he asks.

“My grandfather.” Myek is one of the few who knew her family before arriving at the temple, city born they call them instead of temple born (not true but practically since they remember nothing but the temple) like most of them. City born are rarer and, like Chirrut and his Force sense, viewed as other, viewed as separate. They should be friends for this simple fact alone, he and Myek, but they have never gotten along. “He said that the Whills used to raise them to defend Jedha.”

“Why? From what? That’s what the Guardians are for. The Guardians defend Jedha. The Guardians defend the Whills.” He just his chin into the air, dismissive. “The Whills wouldn’t do that. That sounds like the work of our lost cousins. I don’t believe you.”

Myek is on her knees, leaning forward to press a finger against his chest. “I don’t know why they did it. My grandfather just told me that they did. Long ago. There were Force creations. They were made of clay, and the Force brought them to life. And they protected the city.” Her voice is getting louder with every word, but Chirrut just sits there, arms crossed over his chest, looking down his nose at her even as she prods his chest with her finger.

The Masters call him proud, stubborn. Chirrut, unlike the Whills, does not bend so easy. He will not concede. “I don’t believe you,” he says again, and Myek snarls loud enough for the noise to echo through the training room and then down the long, dark hall. No one is surprised when the night Guardian opens the door and commands them to return to their beds.

Stretched out on his bed, arms crossed over his chest, which throbs just a little from the pressure of Myek’s finger, Chirrut thinks that he should be pleased, that he has won, but he finds no victory in the taste of pointing out the flaws in Myek’s story. He cannot stop thinking about it, the Force creations, wonder what they would have looked like, carved from Jedhan clay, ruddy and red like the mountains that they see from the temple towers, like the blowing sand. He wonders if they were true. If they were the statues fallen in the desert wastes that they have visited.

Most of all he wonders why they ever would have been needed. Why the Force would have granted such a request when it is normally so silent, rushing along neatly through the universe, everywhere but pointedly minding its own business except where it is itself harassed. It cannot be true. There is no reason for it to be true. It must be just one of the many little stories, the odd little tales that float through the city. He has heard many of them. Like Lanzo’s wind monsters.

The Force creation. Nothing at all. Just a myth. Just a legend.

If he dreams of one, tall and lumbering, with dark eyes and curly, braided hair, with a crack down its face and a beating, singing heart of kyber, he does not remember it when he wakes.

 

He does not remember the dream, but the story stays with him, the idea of it, this Force creation lumbering through the streets of NiJedha, powered in a way that makes no sense. It as good as stalks him down the temple halls, always just out of sight but on his mind nevertheless, and Chirrut wears a frown for a good week as he turns it over in his thoughts. Of course, he does not believe in it. Who in their right mind would, after all? A Force creation is surely not the way of the Whills. Even if it was, the Force does not work like that, not really. Whenever his path crosses that of Myek’s, he glares at her until she rolls her eyes and walks away. Chirrut knows that it is not actually her fault, of course, but she is easy to blame. It is easier to blame her for putting the idea into his head than himself for being unable to shake it.

It is approaching two weeks of fruitless, weary pondering over the idea when he finally heads into the archives one day after classes but before the nightly meal. The archive is like a labyrinth, taking up two of the windy, twisty floors of the temple, high above the ground. The temple of the Whills was built piecemeal, a little at a time, and not all the sections match because of this and it makes traveling it circuitous and strange. Even the temple born can take years to master it. Chirrut is not sure whether anyone knows all its secrets even the very eldest masters. Sometimes he thinks the temple is the moon of Jedha itself, that it stretches far into the core of her and out, tunnels that wind under the sand away from the mesa and the city. If the temple ever falls, which it will not because it is needed, then their moon cannot be far behind.

The archive is a mass of knowledge stored in all of its forms: books, scrolls, datapads, memory files. There is no scrap of information that the Whills lets slip away and while they do their best to transcribe things from one format into another, one language into another, in order to keep everything accessible, it is a long task that never nears completion, especially as the preferred format keeps changing on them and when pilgrims are ever bringing new books and other relics from their own worlds when they visit. The Whills never turns away a gift even if it is just a tattered book of poetry in a language that no one can read. Gifts are special. Gifts are important. Besides someone may have need for the book one day, and if so it should be here waiting for them. It is said that one can find anything in the Temple of the Whills if they look hard enough, if they have need enough, though Chirrut has never been able to prove that one way or another, has never really considered it that hard either.

Chirrut passes by seemingly endless shelves of books with their green and black and blue bindings, their silver and gold etched letters on the spines to indicate what might lie inside of them. Might lie because he has learned by now that titles do not always accurately reflect the subject matter on the pages. This floor is mostly comprised of books written in Jedhan, but he has no idea where to start. The archive is meticulously organized but the system is convoluted and old, known only to the archive masters who drift through the aisles in their green robes, eyes always transfixed by something, seemingly able to navigate both of the floors without once looking up from whatever it is they are learning. Catching them can be difficult. Explaining what you need can be even harder.

The very idea of giving voice to what he is looking for makes Chirrut’s tongue grow thick in his mouth. Will they laugh at him? Will they send him to the High Master to explain himself? Will he be set to a month of chores like washing the floors or helping in the kitchens as a result of this inquiry? This is, of course, all Myek’s fault, and he wants to turn on the heels of his feet to saunter through the halls of the temple until he finds her so that he can pull her into the archive and force her to make the ludicrous request. But he doubts it would do any good. For one thing, Myek would probably laugh at him, mock the fact that he cannot get the words out of his mind, refuse to come with him. He doesn’t know if she believes the story that she told or cares enough to try and find more information about it. He doesn’t know. He doesn't want to find out.

Instead, he wanders, glancing aimlessly as the titles on the books that he passes, sure none of them will offer any help. It would be wrong to assume that most of the books are about the Force. There is much that has been written on the Force, and the Whills, and their lost cousins the Jedi, and much of it is here, but even that amount of knowledge would not require two full floors of the labyrinthine temple. No, the majority of the books, of the knowledge, is other. Some of it is not even factual. There are scores of poetry books and mythology and fables and oral traditions that someone finally wrote down before they descended into nothing. There are scrolls that are full of songs no one knows how to play anymore. An entire section is devoted to the history of the universe and the planets strung across it by anyone who was brave enough to tell it, the winners and the losers alike. The Whills stores information and passes no judgment on whether it is worthy or not. They keep everything, hoard it away like the dragons in some of the tales on these shelves.

Eventually, the shelves of multi-colored books give way to a wall of charging datapads, their lights blinking in unique patterns, one of the few working droids in the temple moving along through them to unhook those that are fully charged and plug in the ones with waning battery life. The droid has no mechanical voicebox, no way to help Chirrut, no way to find any information at all. It simply sweeps up and down the rows, plugging in and unplugging the pads. The Whills is wary about technology because they worry some of the conveniences will breed laziness and a loss of skills, but even they can admit that a droid is better suited to some of the more monotonous, tedious duties.

Chirrut pauses for a moment to watch it. It is unlike the droids that he has seen in the marketplace on those rare occasions when he slips the reigns of the temple to explore. Those droids engage, they are always on the lookout for people, customers, thieves, trickery. They are constantly near their masters, obedient and friendly, a lot like pets in a strange way but also like people as well. This one is nothing like that. All it has sensors for is the task it has been put to. It moves slowly and with great effort, as though its wheels need to be oiled, from one end of the row to the next, the path programmed into it long ago, a path that never changes. He wonders if it’s lonely. He wonders if it’s sad. If it can even be any of those things or if it is too old for all that.

A pad beeps, the droid goes to it, plugs it in, and then chugs along the row until another pad beeps. Over and over. Again and again. It looks like a box on wheels, nothing shiny or aesthetic about it, and he wonders whether it came this way or was cobbled together from the parts of other droids in order to achieve what the Whills wanted, a sightless, voiceless tool set to a task they deemed beneath them, not given enough to ever be useful in any other capacity. Chirrut wonders, strangely, whether a droid with no voice can scream and for how long. He makes a mental note to let the archive masters know that the droid might need its wheels oiled, might need maintenance, might need something even if it is just a respite for a few hours.

Another pad beeps, the droid rolls slowly, achingly away to get to it, and Chirrut continues walking. In truth, he is wandering aimlessly. It doesn’t even do him much good to look at titles or open books because he doesn’t know where what he needs would be, isn’t even completely sure what he is looking for because is this myth or fact or legend. There is no way of knowing. It’s not like he can look up “Force creation” in the archive database and expect to get a hit because that only searches the data pads and the memory cards. Myek’s tale feels older than pads and cards. Chirrut doubts anyone has ever typed it into anything, worries that no one ever put pen to paper to write it down. How much information, how many stories are lost forever because no one ever thought to write them down?

There is the sight of green at the end of an aisle toward the back, and Chirrut ignores the rules of the archive to sprint toward it, hurtling down one row after another, the book spines a blur alongside him, careful not to run into any of the shelves, skidding to a stop once he reaches the end of the row where he saw the robe and looking around, heaving a sigh of relief when he sees one of the archive masters, nose in a book, set on a slow trudge around the archive floor. There but not there just like always.

“Master?” he calls out even as he starts toward the form. There is no response, just the turning of a page.

Chirrut tries again. “Master?”

This time the master looks up and over at him, deep-set eyes with lids that close from the sides when they blink. Chirrut does not know all the masters in the temple. No one does, he thinks. There are too many of them and lots of them have specialties that keep them away from the initiates, like the archive masters. The guardians are much better known because they are the ones mostly in charge of teaching and interacting, walking the halls at night, leading lessons, showing the initiates how to wield a lightbow, how to clean kyber, a thousand and one simple, everyday tasks. The masters are much more mysterious; he thinks they prefer it that way.

“Child?” the master replies, tilting their side to the side but not moving closer.

Chirrut thinks he sees a thin, long tongue scenting the air, but he cannot be sure. He does not know the names or the habits of all the species that exist across the galaxy. All he knows for sure is that they are one in the Force. When the master does not move, Chirrut takes the initiative to come closer albeit hesitantly. Some of the masters do not want people near them, he has heard because it throws off their communion with the Force. This one gives no indication that they mind. At least none that he can see. Their eyes stay fixed on him, head tilted, tongue seemingly poking out between the thin, almost invisible lips. “Master, I,” he has to stop and swallow, tongue still thick in his mouth because what is he thinking. This is ludicrous. This is nothing. And yet it also will not leave him so he supposes that he needs to know even if he would rather not, would prefer to just forget all about the suggestion of a Force creation.

Either the master is the patient, quiet sort or speaking in Jedhan is difficult for them so they avoid it because they continue to wait while Chirrut attempts to gather his words together. “I’m looking for a book.”

The lids slit over the eyes again. “There are lots of books here.”

“I know, but I. It.” He curls his hands tight where they press against his sides. “It’s a certain kind of book. I don’t know where to find it.”

“Have you looked? Maybe you’re not meant to find it.”

It does not surprise him that the master speaks in riddles or suggests that something might be out of his reach. It does not surprise him at all, but it does make the little tickle of irritation in his belly that much stronger. “I need to find it.” The amount of emphasis that Chirrut places on the word “need” surprises him, but if it surprises the master he cannot tell. “I thought maybe you could help me determine where to start. Looking.”

Now the master closes the book in their hands with a noise that might be a sigh but sounds like a resigned click deep in their throat to Chirrut. “What is the subject?”

“Someone told me a story,” he begins, and the master makes that click again and turns.

“A story. There are many stories. Not all of them are here.”

The green robes are drawing away, slowly, slowly. If they disappear, Chirrut is concerned that he will never find the master again, never find the book he is looking for. “It was about a Force creation!” he insists, striding forward to follow the master.

Chirrut cannot read the expression in the eyes of the master when they look back at him. “Legend. Local. Top floor. South wing. Aisle in the corner by the window. Bottom two shelves.”

Instead of scampering straight off or even saying thank you, Chirrut stands, struck, licking his lips, questing for the words. “Is it. Is it true then? Is that a thing? Do you know anything?”

When the master speaks, it is just a reiteration. “Legend. Local. Top floor. South…”

Chirrut speeds off before the master has the chance to finish.

The section that he is looking for is tucked away into such a small corner that Chirrut passes by it twice before he recognizes that there are in fact books there. More than books, actually. Someone has taken the time to fashion a small reading nook in the corner, which is part of the reason that it is so easy to walk past. Once he squirms his way into the small opening, the corner opens up, one whole wall lined with books while the other two, even under the window, are full of the platform covered in old blankets for sitting and reading. The windows in the archive are larger than those found elsewhere in the temple, and their placement, for the most part, has been picked in order to filter in the best amount of light for reading, the glass tempered, however, to ensure that the light does not damage the books. Chirrut makes a mental note of the cubbyhole for later even as he wonders who put it together, how long it has gone unnoticed in this seldomly used section of the archive. There is only the faintest hint of dust when he crawls in, and he wonders if this is because someone uses it or simply because the cleaning droids are fastidious in their duties.

The bottom two shelves, like so many others in the archive, are filled with the tattered, multi-colored spines of books, their titles starting to rub off such that it is a struggle to discern what he’s looking at without opening them. All of these books are in the various languages that scatter from one end of Jedha to another, and he cannot read them all. As a temple born, Chirrut knows no clan language, no family language. All he has ever been taught is middle Jedhan, the common tongue of their moon, and Basic. As a result of this, he has to put more than half of the books back into their places, but he still ends up with a sizable pile at his feet.

The texts all seem to be motley collections of stories, fables, legends, fairy tales. Exactly the kinds of things that he and his fellows whisper to each other in the dark. If he was not so set on discovering information about the Force creation, he would read through them to find new tales to startle the others with, but that can be saved for later. For the moment, there is only the slow going procession of scanning the indexes and flipping through the pages, glancing at the occasional pictures that accompany the stories to see if one of those illustrates the legend he is seeking.

Chirrut thinks, as his legs start to cramp up from the awkward angle, and he pulls himself backward onto the reading platform, that the very fact of where he was directed to look for information about Force creations should more than prove his point about them not being real. He is in the legend section, after all. This is not history. This is not philosophy. This is not even Force speculation, which is a section that sounded like it should have been a goldmine of interesting facts but was really just several hundred books full of rambling discourse about whether Force ghosts, another facet that had been experienced by some but could not be proven, appeared blue or green. (There had been one entire book that enumerated the fact that none of this research really mattered because not all species across the universe had the same light receptors. And then there was another thesis suggesting that Force ghosts did not display on the actual physical plane but were a manifestation of the Force inside the mind’s eye and, thus, they should have a consistent color.) Chirrut had attempted to read several of these because some of the masters thought it was important for him to become knowledgeable in Force theory but had stopped after less than fifty pages in each one because they were just as boring as watching clay bake in the sun for bricks. No, they were less interesting than that even. As far as Chirrut was concerned, it didn’t matter what color Force ghosts were unless he was seeing them and since none of the texts had talked about how to go about doing that, he had given up that extracurricular activity for more training.

Despite the fact that this alone should be enough proof, he isn’t satisfied. He wants to be able to find the story in a book, any of these, as a fable, as a legend. He wants to have something physical that he can grab and run down the stairs to shove in Myke’s face, prove her wrong. It does not occur to him that stories can be influenced by real events, that legends often contain a kernel of truth. All he thinks is that if it is here, if it ends up here, then it must be nothing more than a story told to children to pass the time.

But if it is here, he cannot find it. Not by just flipping through the books, scanning the pages without truly reading, looking at pictures whose context he does not know. And then, of course, there are all the books that he cannot read at all because of the difference in language.

Frustrated, Chirrut pushes the book off his lap onto the reading platform next to him and stretches out on his back to gaze out the window. “Force creations,” he mutters. “Rubbish.” He wonders if the master was just trying to get rid of him. He wonders whether there is anything in the entire archive about them at all, fable or not. Maybe it was just a guess. Maybe he will have to sit here and read through each and every one of these books in order to find out.

Patience has never been one of Chirrut’s virtues. The masters and the guardians tell him this all the time. That he needs to learn to sit and wait. That things come in their own time, and he cannot rush them. But the universe is so large, and time is limited. Chirrut wants everything now, right this instant so that he can go on to the next thing as quickly as possible without wasting any precious moment. That, however, is not the way the universe works, not the way the Force works.

He hates it sometimes, the slow ebb of the Force, the lazy way it seems to flow, lazy, even when it is everywhere and in everything, the way it does not seem to rush. Patience is his worst virtue, and meditation is his least favorite form, but it looks like he may have to employ both of them if he wants to solve the mystery that he has laid out for himself.

“Have you found what you’re looking for?”

The voice startles him, and Chirrut nearly falls off the reading platform in his haste to find his feet and answer the master. When he crawls out of the corner, he is somewhat disheveled, hastily adjusting his robes into some semblance of order. If the master notices or cares about his appearance, they give no sign, merely slotting their eyes shut and then open again, carefully regarding him, head still tilted to the side and tongue scenting the air. “Not yet, master.” There is a question he wants to ask, but he considers for a moment whether it is worth it. Chances are that the master will instruct him that this is a learning lesson, and he needs to find the truth for himself, that knowledge is never given to those who do not work for it, but he is also in a bit of a hurry to be right, which is what wins out in the end. Holding his tongue is also not one of his virtues. “Do you know which book it might be in?”

“Hmmmm?” the master turns their head to the other side at an angle that a humanoid neck would not allow and clicks their sharp, serrated teeth together as though considering. “No. Knowledge comes to those who preserve.”

He knew it.

“Also,” the master continues, “I have not read it myself, but it is a legend of Jedha so if it is anywhere it is here. You might need a bit more patience, young one.”

None of this is quite the news that Chirrut had wanted. There is not even a guarantee that what he seeks is here. The master had only said that it is a legend of Jedha, not that it was written down. The pile of books waiting for him in the small reading nook suddenly seems much larger, full of dusty pages and tedious searching. He wonders if it is worth it to be proven right. (It is. Of course, it is. He doesn’t know why Myek and her smiles and her attitude bothers him so, but he wants to prove the city born wrong, and he will. Even if he has to teach himself other Jedhan languages to do it.)

He tries to keep the disappointment from his face, but it is a hard task. “Thank you, master. I will keep looking. May I take some of the books to my room?” It is not a likely scenario. The temperature in the archive is carefully controlled in order to best preserve the various forms of knowledge contained within. Jedha is a harsh mistress, especially to fragile things, and the archive was built specifically to protect what is kept inside it. Researching is meant to be done within the confines of the archive so as not to endanger priceless knowledge, but Chirrut knows that he will find the answer quicker if he can read the books through the night.

The look on the master’s face might be a smile, but they shake their head slowly. “No. These texts are old. They need to stay here. However, I will give you special dispensation to come to the archive for two hours after dinner so that you may continue your research. Will that be acceptable?”

Chirrut is sure that the surprise is evident on his face. “Yes, master.”

“Give me your name so that I can set the scanners to recognize you and allow you entry. Just be forewarned that should you attempt to overstay your welcome your archive access will be paused for two cycles.”

“I understand, master. My name is Imwe. Chirrut Imwe.”

The master’s eyes seem to glimmer a bit in recognition. “Ah, young Imwe. I will go set up the scanners. You should get ready for dinner. Your robes are askew and your face needs washed as well as your hands. The books will be waiting for you when you return. Please keep them orderly.” With that, the master turns and retreats, green robes disappearing in the labyrinth of aisles that stretch across the floor of the archive.

While Chirrut does not want to leave, does not want to go to dinner, he does not want the master to think he is ungrateful for the offered compromise. After quickly piling the books on the bottom shelf, tucked near all the others but in such a way that it will be easy for him to discern which ones he was looking through, he hurries off to get ready for the evening meal.

The moment Chirrut walks into the dining hall, he is scanning the room for Myek. It’s not easy to pick one initiate out of the throng. The hall is always busy, full of initiates of various stages, talking or laughing, all dressed in the same color robe because it’s easier for the temple that way. They mark their progression with different colored under robes, but those are not easily discernible at a glance. Rows of shaved heads do not help matters, either, but he at least knows where the others his age normally sit and starts off in that direction first.

Sure enough, there is Myek, seated between two initiates that Chirrut does not know as well. She is in the middle of talking to them when he pushes through the others to lean heavily on the table across from her, and her eyes narrow when he says, without any preamble at all, “Where are you from?”

“What?” her voice is hard and annoyed. She looks seconds away from chucking a handful of protein mash into his face. On a normal day, Chirrut wouldn’t really blame her, but this is different. He is looking for something, and she might be the only person, unfortunately, who can help him.

“What’s your family language?” he asks the next rapid-fire question without even giving her the chance to really answer the first one.

Myek’s face gets even darker. “I’m not telling you that.”

Being temple born Chirrut doesn’t understand why some of the others get so secretive when things like languages or where they are from get brought up. It doesn’t make any sense. They’re all here now. They are one in the Whills. Nothing divides. Not species or planet of origin or language. It just doesn’t matter. The city born, though, hold some of these things close to them like it hurts to say, like it is a secret they have to guard inside their own body, curled around it in order to protect it. If today was a different day he might be prone to asking questions about that, trying to figure out the reasons for it. But, again, he is looking for something in particular and has no time for that.

Clapping his hands back against the table for the sound, he says, “I need to know.”

“I don’t care. You didn’t want to listen to me the other night. Why should I talk to you now?”

This conversation would be easier if one of their virtues wasn’t supposed to be telling the truth. It is another one that Chirrut does not always excel at, but there are quite a lot of people paying attention to them now so he figures that a rather bold-faced lie will get him in trouble. It’s going to be better to try and somehow elaborate the truth, get Myek less mad at him without giving away the fact that he is doing his level best to prove her wrong. “I keep thinking about what you told us.” Not a lie. “And I wanted to find out more about it so I thought I would check the archive, but I wasn’t sure what section to use.” This is mostly the truth.

“Why not just ask me?”

Chirrut clenches his jaw for a moment. “I mean, I didn’t want to bother you.”

Myek stretches her hands out as though to indicate the present moment and the fact that he is, indeed, bothering her. “Really?”

He does his best to look sheepish even though he doesn’t feel that in the slightest. “Sorry. I just got excited about potentially finding it in the Force doctrine.” Leaning back from the table, he sets his shoulders, putting on his best haughty look. “You did know that I’m in advanced Force classes, right?” Of course, she knows. Everyone knows. It’s most of the reason why Chirrut’s circle of friends is small and the older initiates sometimes glare at him in the hall because how dare he? How dare he already be so much better than them when he is flippant and they work so very hard? It is not fair, Chirrut knows, but the Force is not always fair.

“Yeah.” If anything, her tone sounds flatter now, even less interested than she had been before but also not as mad. Chirrut isn’t sure whether this is a good thing or not. “So if you’re checking the doctrine, does that mean you believe me?”

It’s difficult for him to contain the grimace that wants to cross his face because, no, he does not believe her. This whole thing is about proving her wrong, but if he says that Myek will never give him what he is starting to feel is vital information. So he decides to continue stretching the truth a little. “Not yet. That’s why I want to check the doctrine.”

Myek clicks her tongue and sighs but does not yell at him or leave the table so Chirrut considers it to be an almost win. As much of a win as he can probably get considering the circumstances. “Fine. I’m not telling you my family language.”

He tries not to groan in frustration.

“But my family is from the sand plains south of the mesa originally. Before we moved to NiJedha proper generations ago. That’s the neighborhood we still inhabit.”

Chirrut knows that NiJedha is divided into neighborhoods that correspond with areas and planets, cultures and languages. Even though it is a blended city, the blending itself does not stretch that far into its roads and alleys. The marketplace and the temple are where everyone blends together but left to their own devices, they seem to separate again into groups. As a temple born, it is another thing he does not quite understand, and he has never thought about it too hard because he doesn’t see the point. Myek speaks about it so simply as though it is all she has ever known, as though she sees nothing strange in it at all, which he supposes makes sense if it was her normal all these years. Still. He thinks that the way of the temple is better, all together, no real lines drawn. Except that they are. He is proof enough of that.

“Is there a name for it?” he asks, wishing he had brought something with him to write it down and furiously hoping that he will be able to remember what Myek tells him because he is not sure he can get her to repeat it.

She sighs again as though this is the most boring conversation she has ever been a part of, which is impossible because how can a conversation with him ever be boring, and then rolls her eyes and says a name in middle Jedhan that he wouldn’t be able to spell anyway. “Now will you leave me alone?” she asks.

Chirrut nods, mouthing the word to himself in an attempt to memorize it properly as he turns on his heel away from the table and over to the meal line. He does not pay much attention to the food that he shoves haphazardly into his mouth, mostly trying not to choke himself as he attempts to eat and repeat the name at the same time, over and over again until it emblazons itself on his brain like one of the Force sutras.

When he races back to the archive doors, they are closed, the slowly flickering lights on the security pads indicating their lock status, and he hesitates for a moment, wondering whether the master would have had time to adjust the settings today or remembered at all. It might have just been a ploy to get him to leave. Then he remembers that if he wants any extra time today, he needs to get a move on. The two hours has already been whittled down by the fact that he was late to dinner and then spent more time trying to get Myek to talk to him. And then got roped into helping clean off the tables because he was one of the last people in the dining hall at close. If he’s lucky, he has maybe forty minutes of time left.

Nothing comes to those who don’t work for it, he remembers and then slams his hand against the pad. Best case scenario, the door will open. Worst case scenario, the door will simply tell him that reading hours are closed and to come back the next day. No alarms are going to go off. No one is really going to care. Except him. It feels like Chirrut’s world just stops like time stretches out into eternity as he waits for the pad to finish the scan and produce its decision.

Finally, the lights blink green and the door slowly slides open to allow him entry. The pad displays, to his horror, that he has thirty-three minutes and counting left on his allotment. It is not enough time to dig into anything, he thinks, groaning as he sprints away down the aisles. When it is closed, the archive lights are dimmed and it looks like a perpetual twilight. The air is dry and just slightly on the chill side, though it is nothing compared to the nights of Jedha. Still, he reminds himself that he should remember to bring an extra outer robe with him when he comes because without a heater or physical activity or the sun pouring in through the windows to provide additional warmth, he is likely to get chilled. If the cold seeps into your bones during the Jedha night, it is difficult to shake it. Chirrut has heard some of the city born tell tales about how once the cold settles in you, bone-deep, soul deep, then it is only a matter of time before you slip away from the land of the living. They say that the night wind carries the spirits of the dead back to the city from where they linger in the desert and that anyone caught out in it will be possessed, taken over, spirit wed. He does not really believe in these things, the same way that he does not believe in Myek’s Force creation, but he understands why others might make those assumptions based on the wind, the cold, how it can seem to steal life right through someone’s grasping fingers.

When he reaches the corner and slides into the reading nook created there, he isn’t sure of the best thing to do. There is little time to really read anything. Instead, he sets himself to making piles, trying to determine which books might include tales from the area that Myek said and which are more generalized. He does not touch the ones written in languages he cannot read. Not yet. Those are his last resort books, the ones that will require the most effort to crack.

There is a warning chime when he has five minutes left, and Chirrut sprints across the expanse of the archive to exit the doors early. Just to make sure that he does not lose the privilege.

 

What he finds, eventually, after several weeks of looking is just a story about a man in desperate need. The man, poor, crops failing, family sick and in need, has no one to help him tend his farm, nurse the sick, he has no way to make any money at all. In dire straits, he asks the Force for help, and the Force answers him. It tells him to make a man from everything he holds dear. It tells him to make a vessel for its power. Once the body is complete, it tells him to fill it with his own breath and the breath of those closest to him and to pray so that the Force can bring it to life.

The man does as he is told. He makes the creation carefully, lovingly, taking his time over crafting its body out of clay from his field, its eyes out of stones from his garden, its hair made from yarn his wife spun, and so on. For its heart, he embeds a tiny sliver of kyber he once purchased from the temple of the Whills. Once the creation is complete, he and his family press their mouths to the hole of its mouth and fill it with their breath. And then they pray to the Force. They pray for days. They almost give up hope.

Until the creation moves, shudders, lumbers to life, unknowing, without a voice, and helps them when and where it can. It tends the crops. It nurses the ill. It protects them. At first, they love it. They tend to it and treat it like a member of the family. But slowly, as time passes, they stop seeing it as an extension of the Force, something given to them in love and start to view it as a tool. They leave it out in the rain. They set it to harder and harder tasks, alone, instead of sharing those burdens with it.

One day they walk out of their house, now larger and better, more luxurious as they have profited from the work of the creation, to find it gone. Not quite gone but dissolved. Where the creation had been staying, under a shoddy lean-to in the yard, barely out of the elements, is just a pile of clay and sand and stones with one tiny bit of kyber on top that no longer glimmers, no longer shines because they have forgotten to love it, and the Force has taken it away.

The family falls back into poverty and need but there is no longer anyone who will help them.

Once Chirrut has the story, the only one about Force creations he can locate, he isn’t sure that he likes it. It’s not the sort of story he’s used to reading when it comes to the Force. It is much more active, but not in the way of their lost cousins the Jedi. This is a gift that is taken for granted. It is a parable, a warning, to be grateful for what you are given, to be thankful for help, to not become greedy and blind to the needs of others, to love everything around you. It is a lesson wrapped in a story about making a man from clay.

He does not tell Myek the truth when he finishes the story and puts all the books back on the shelves where they belong. What would he tell her anyway? That her story exists, but it is not true, that she should not believe it but should trust in the lesson behind it? That might invalidate the lesson, and Chirrut thinks it is a good one. As he passes the droid tending to the data pads, he wonders whether it is a lesson that more of them should think on.

But, soon, quickly, he forgets all about the idea of the Force creation. It gets swept away in learning more about the Force itself and training for his next duan. It just becomes something he once chased in his youth.

Except, sometimes, at night when he dreams. When something in his dreams moves in the darkness, something with a scar across its face and deep-set, wet eyes, something that shines like kyber and speaks his name in a voice that sounds like boulders falling down a mountain. Yet, even then he does not remember it when he wakes.


	2. The Jedi

Chirrut is just past twenty when the Jedi announce their intentions to come for a visit to the temple of the Whills. This is not an ordinary move. Typically the Jedi will arrive in secret, some disguised as normal pilgrims so as not to draw attention and the elder Masters and Guardians will escort them to the kyber caves so that they can go through whatever ritual is needed before in order to select the proper shard. The Guardians will wait at the mouth of the cave until the Jedi returns, successful or not because, apparently, it is not always a task that can be won.

“Like duans,” the masters explained to them when they were young. “Sometimes you fail, but you just have to pick yourself up and try again.”

Chirrut is unsure whether or not their lost cousins the Jedi are allowed something so simple as trying again. He thinks it might be more their speed to demand that once a task has been failed, the person is cast out, left to the devices of the universe, no longer allowed to be part of their ranks, which seems hasty and unkind. The Whills are filled with people who are not masters or guardians or initiates. All children in the care of the Whills are initiates but not all initiates become part of the Whills. They are not expected to. Some stay on simply because they love the temple or the people. Some are there to help with duties like cooking or gardening and while they never passed the tests, they are still an integral part of the temple, as everyone in an integral part of the Force. There is no line that separates those who matter from those who do not because everyone matters.

Sometimes Chirrut wonders whether the Jedi have forgotten this fact or whether they ever knew it at all.

This is one of the few times that he has ever heard of the Jedi messaging ahead and indicating that they want to visit the Whills to hold a meeting, for the two main branches of Force learning--he has heard of others, even whispers of witches, over the years but it is known that those are smaller sects and the Whills has never discouraged people to seek their own way--to sit down and talk about the future. Typically when they contact the Whills it is for another shipment of kyber, the mass packages of the crystals apparently used for things other than their secret task to locate their own. Chirrut has asked after particulars but none of the Masters have been able to give them to him and the Guardians who have been assigned to the kyber caves during those trials simply shrug and say that they neither heard nor saw anything at all happen while they were there. If it were not so impossible to predict when one of the journeys might happen, Chirrut would be tempted to hide in the kyber caves until he could see it for himself, but it could be days or it could be years. While he may have gotten somewhat more patient as time has passed, there is no way he would be able to wait for anything that long.

Chirrut knows the kyber caves well. Everyone who lives at the Temple of the Whills does because the caves are open to all. Under certain safety precautions such as that initiates cannot go alone, no one is to enter during the Jedi trials, that they are off limits during the rare rainy seasons on Jedha because the rain filters into the pools and swells them to the point that normal, well-known paths become rushing rivers and the deeper wells become swirling and monstrous, ready to take anyone under who steps into them, to carry them to the heart of Jedha or beyond, perhaps into the wide, wide Force where the kyber crystals were first born. Everyone knows the kyber caves, though Chirrut likes to think that he knows them better than most of his fellows as a result of his natural Force abilities, the way that it just curves and leans into him like a lothcat rubbing against his legs for attention.

He has spent many a night meditating on one high rock or another while the cave pulses around him, full of small specks of flickering light, the kyber crystals, living, breathing, singing, growing, on every side of him, and the kyber worms who eat the crystals and shine from inside with it and then crawl around the cave spinning kyber silk that no one ever weaves with because the moment any hands touch it, it crumbs into nothing but a fine glitter against the skin. As an initiate, Chirrut remembers running through kyber silk webs and then rubbing the phosphorescence across his body until he glowed like a kyber shard, until the Force was loud, loud and everywhere, amplified seemingly a thousandfold by all the kyber on his skin. Sometimes he wonders whether it seeped slowly into his body through his skin, suffused his cells and all the dark dark hidden places under his flesh, into his bones themselves, strengthening his connection, but he doubts it. Some of his fellows would cover their skin in kyber silk too, and none of them feel the way that he feels, with everything, as simple as breathing. So, no, it cannot have been just that alone. He was born with it, a knowing stretched deep into him and beyond, an inexplicable connection, itself sometimes as much a burden as a gift.

In the days following the announcement of the meeting with the Jedi, he remembers how much of both it can be.

He is in the archives helping Master Adair with the shelving and rearranging and dusting, cleaning each aisle from top to bottom because there are not enough droids to go around for the entire temple, and they are never as fastidious as sentient hands anyway. Plus Chirrut has grown to like spending time with Master Adair. He thinks that was the best thing to come out of his search for the Force creation legend, that lesson that sits in the back of his mind, untouched and unconsidered most days, unless he catches a glimpse of Myek in the training rooms or the crystal refinery and remembers her face, scrunched and proud, the tone of her voice, but it fades quickly and their paths rarely connect. Myek wants to become a traveling Guardian, wants to escape Jedha and spend all of her time on distant planets and moons, spreading the teachings of the Force, helping where she can, looking for adventure. She trains with blasters and takes flight classes from whichever travelers to NiJedha she can bother into letting her onto their ships. Chirrut thinks that it is strange how many of the city born strive for the stars. Most of the temple born prefer to stay where they are, serve the Whills where they are, home. It is not a lack of ambition; it is just a different way to direct it.

Master Adair blinks, slowly, their tongue scenting the air in a motion that has since stopped catching Chirrut off guard. “Someone’s coming,” they say, but show no sign of being bothered by it or of stopping in their task.

Chirrut knows his role by now, hops off the folding stool that he was using to clean the taller shelves, and heads out into the main aisles, eyes sweeping for a sign of whomever Master Adair smelled or sensed coming into the archive. Most things in the temple got smaller as Chirrut grew, lost their immense size and ability to intimidate. The archive is not one of those. It is as expansive and labyrinthine as ever, and Chirrut sometimes wonders whether it is actually bigger than the rest of the temple combined through some sort of strange Force ability, whether it allows more inside of itself, ever expanding, a mirror of the way that one can always learn something new.

It takes him several minutes to find the visitor, one of the elder Masters who stands two dozen aisles away from the doors, stock still in the rows of rolled scrolls as though she is a lost initiate waiting to be found. Perhaps that is what she feels like. Perhaps that is what everyone feels like who steps into the maze of knowledge contained within the archive, everyone who hasn’t spent enough time there to start to consider it home the way that Chirrut does now.

“Master,” he greets her, pitching his voice up enough to ensure that he is heard but not so much that she might find it rude.

“Ah, there you are Imwe. We were looking for you.” The Master’s robes are purple and gold to match her status with soft creams in the under robes. Knowledge, leadership, doctrine.

Chirrut has learned all the colors, all their meanings. All he wants is blue, and black, and red. Guardian robes. Protector robes. All Chirrut wants is to guard the city and the temple and the kyber and every initiate inside of it, but they tell him that he is not ready yet, that he is too young to pick such a path when there are so many open to him. He would be appreciated in the archive all greens and golds or in the kyber refinery in tan and blue. Or, most praised, most esteemed, rarely followed Force Guardian in light blue, pale, pale like the sky at the beginning of the morning only just beginning to know color, and white, pristine, fabled, vaulted white. But Chirrut has never wanted to be locked away fretting over doctrine, meditating long into the day. His body is honed, practiced in every form and every stance, and he knows how to wield as many of the weapons as he is allowed to touch, built his own lightbow to show them that he could, which is one of the Guardian tasks completed early. Still, they ask him to wait. Still, they ask him to think. It is frustrating and wears on his patience, which is longer now but still shorter than it should be and thin easily ripped aside like a paper lantern.

“You have found me, Master. Or, more accurately, I have found you. Is there a task you have for me?” It is a dangerous question, loaded, and he is unable to predict what the answer will be. The Masters, more and more, like to set tasks for him, small trials to get his feet wet in different disciplines, all while they insist that he cannot yet apply for the last duan, the last step before Guardianhood. When he is in a bad mood, he wants to throw it all in their faces, wants to whirl and dash and show them. Show them what he is meant to be no matter how good he is at anything else. He wants a place beside peers instead of constantly being held apart from them. His whole life has been lonely because of the Force, because of his leaps and bounds in it, and because of his proficiency with training as well. It would be nice, he thinks, to have camaraderie at least. To not be viewed as someone climbing well up a mountain that no one else can find handholds on.

She is stately, regal, diplomatic, but she cannot hide the slight smile that crosses her face at his antics. Chirrut hopes that is a good sign. “The Jedi. We were hoping you would acquiesce to being a guide for one of them.”

Chirrut does not know how many Jedi are coming. He does not think anyone of lesser status does. The announcement to them had simply been that the Jedi were coming for a meeting and everyone was to do their part in helping to make the temple look presentable. It is all they have been doing for a week, Masters and Guardians and Initiates and tenants alike, just cleaning and tidying, bringing delicate, priceless treasures out of storage to litter the halls with and make the younglings nervous and more prone to walking timidly than their normal stampede method of movement. Since Jedi is a word that, even in Jedhan, can be plural or singular, none of them have hazarded a guess as to how many it might entail. At least one but probably less than twenty. The Masters have often told them that the Jedi do not like to travel in large groups. Possibly this is because of their attachment issues. Maybe they are all paranoid about being in a cluster, a target for any who might oppose them, though Chirrut is unsure whether anyone in the universe would actively try such a thing. He has never seen Jedi tricks in person, but he has heard about them, the way they push and pull the Force around, the way they can bend it to their own will instead of leaving it in the beds of its stream, content, flowing. Anyone with enough audacity to do such a thing is either very brave or very reckless, both probably. Chirrut knows a thing or two about reckless, and gifted knows how it makes other people shun you slightly and step away.

He wonders, not for the first time, whether the Jedi are very lonely even in groups together. He knows what it is to be in a group and yet alone, though his is not self-inflicted, guided by archaic rules that make no sense in the grand scheme of things. No, his exile is the result of being different from his fellows, and it is not easy. Is it easy to be a Jedi?

There are many things he would like to ask the Jedi. In the end, the answer is easier than he would have thought. “It would be my honor to be a guide for one of the Jedi, Master.”

When she smiles fully, it is warm, soft, like Jedhan sunlight through a window on a cold morning. The Masters of the Whills are lots of things, but they are, above all else, kind, good people at heart. Even the Guardians at the doors with their weapons. Together they are all striving for understanding. “Thank you, Imwe. Further directions will be given to you once all the necessary arrangements have been made. We are unsure how long they will stay at this juncture, but you will be kept abreast of the pertinent information as it unfolds. We are very pleased with your answer. We think you will represent the temple well.”

Chirrut bows as the Master makes her way back out of the archive. Bows and thinks. All of this is probably because of his own Force sense. He is strong in the Force, and the Whills wants to prove that to the Jedi. They have long gone back and forth, the Whills and the lost cousins, about the best way to train Force-sensitives, about the right doctrines, the better path. As much as Chirrut dislikes the thought of being a pawn, he still wants to meet the Jedi, still wants to ask his questions.

Are you lonely? What is it like to not be connected to anyone? Does the Force sing for you? Can you actually make something float? Do you ever wonder if you were meant for something else?

He does not know how long he stands there, bowed, at the doors of the archive before he can hear the click and slide of Master Adair’s approach behind him. “Are you well, Chirrut?” they ask, their voice outwardly as flat as ever, but he knows the master well enough to hear the small note of concern in the words, and it pleases him like floating in the kyber pools.

He will take the Jedi with him to the kyber cave. He will see how they react. He needs to see it.

“I am sorry, Master. I was thinking.” As he speaks, he straightens, turns to head back into the aisles and finish the cleaning.

Master Adair does not need to lay a hand on him to make him stop as he passes and look at them, at their slotting eyes, pale scales. Chirrut simply feels the request. “Be careful,” Adair says, voice still with that slight concern that seems to appear annually and when Chirrut is being particularly reckless about something, which is in and of itself a rare occurrence for Adair to witness as Chirrut has never seen them anywhere but the archive. “That’s how one gets lost.”

 

Chirrut isn’t sure what he’s expecting on the day of arrival. There are two ships on the Temple’s landing pad, which they had been meticulously cleaning along with the rest of the sprawling structure, sweeping it free of sand and clearing off the strange, brambly, thorny vines that managed to survive the swings in Jedha’s temperature and the lack of moisture to grow on their own, and at least twenty-five Jedi of various species milling about. Two of the Masters, elder, have gone over to speak to them, get arrangements started, but the Jedi seem to be more concerned about the ships and the droids contained within, speaking to them. Chirrut has seen people in the marketplace speak to their droids, but this seems different somehow, more like the Jedi are talking to valued and trusted family members. Perhaps they manage to circumvent the attachments rule by forming friendships with their droids. He isn’t sure whether this makes him feel sadder for the Jedi or for the droids they keep in the temple, silent, alone.

After an eternity of watching the Masters and the Jedi and the droids, shifting his weight from foot to foot and repeating questions to himself for entertainment in an attempt to stave off slowly crushing boredom, someone finally approaches him. The Jedi looks barely older than him, perhaps a handful of years if that, with kind, soft eyes, and a mouth built for smiling. (Or kissing, which is a thought that flashes unbidden and hot through Chirrut’s head before descending into the darkness with every other bad idea he has ever had.) His hair is fine and a collection of reds and browns and golds, itself like a Jedhan sunset, both on his head and in his beard, which he is pulling at slightly with his fingers, potentially a nervous habit. His robes are cream and brown and layered. Chirrut thinks, for a moment, that they remind him of his own initiate robes. He had not expected that. He had expected the Jedi to be so thoroughly alien and splintered that he would not be able to recognize any hint of the Whills in them. At first glance, he can see the traces, subtle, likely woven into the fabric so long ago that it can never be separated.

Lost cousins who still look and feel like home. He wonders what the Jedi feels now standing foot on Jedha, being at the temple of the Whills with the kyber humming and sighing and the Force undulating around them. It is whip-crack loud in his own ears right now, likely as a result of so many of its disciples gathered together even if the ways they worship it are different. He wonders if the Jedi’s head feels as stuffed full of straw as his own, if his palms itch and his fingers tingle. (The man is slightly taller than him but looks lean under the mounds of fabric. His fingers are long, and Chirrut wonders what they would feel like skating across his flesh.)

Chirrut bows to hide the slight flush he feels in his cheeks, and thinks that he will blame it on standing in the full Jedhan sun if anyone comments on it.

“Imwe,” the Master accompanying the Jedi says in greeting, and Chirrut straightens to face them, looking at the Master in blues and purples rather than the handsome, star plucked Jedi man with the eyes like calm water, the Force around him glimmering and not any more disturbed than anyone else’s he has ever sensed. “This is Jedi Master Kenobi. Jedi Master Kenobi, this is initiate Chirrut Imwe of the Temple of the Whills.”

Chirrut tries not to let it sting that he is not Guardian Chirrut Imwe of the Temple of the Whills as he would like to be, as he has been striving to be as long as he was cognizant of what it was to know to want it. He bows again, switching the subject of the gesture to Kenobi, whose gaze he can feel on his back, on his closely shaved head. “Jedi Master Kenobi,” he says to the man’s feet, and catches them in a small shuffle, potentially another nervous habit.

Bow concluded, he turns his attention back to the Master who continues to speak to the Jedi. “Chirrut will be your guide during your stay with us. If you need anything at all, please let him know. Chirrut, would you be so kind as to take Jedi Master Kenobi to the prepared rooms. Our cousins have had a long journey, and there will be a brief period of rest before the council convenes.”

“Yes, Master,” Chirrut says with another bow in that direction. The Master nods, once, curt but with affection, and then steps back to the throng of Jedi likely to continue the assigning of them to their guides.

“Please, Jedi Master Kenobi, follow me,” Chirrut directs and starts off in the direction of the chambers without a pause of acknowledgment. If the other man minds, he gives no indication, and Chirrut can feel as much as hear him slot into place slightly behind him but almost in stride. If they were friends, it would have been close enough for Chirrut to take his hand and slow his steps, walk side by side. But they are not friends, and he does not know him even if the ocean of his eyes are as inviting as kyber pools and the bow of his mouth has a tilt of sadness whose truth Chirrut would like to learn. Chirrut is no stranger to his whims and fancies, his Force crushes he calls them, inwardly, always inwardly because otherwise it would likely be considered blasphemous and someone somewhere in the temple would want to have a very long and awkward talk with him about how desire is fine and good but not necessarily a part of the Force, though it is but they would rather he not talk about it like that because it makes them uncomfortable.

(“It makes everyone slightly uncomfortable to associate the energy of the universe with sex, Chirrut,” Master Adair told him one day when they were busy shelving and reshelving because the Master was always getting ideas about what system of cataloging would work best. “They understand that energy is energy and the Force is in everything so desire is of the Force and our bodies are of the Force. Thus, sex is of the Force. If anything, sex is possibly one of the more primal ways for sentient beings, especially those who are not very Force-sensitive, to feel the Force, but it is considered something of a base desire and way to fulfill that connection. There are whole scores of books about it in the locked section.”

Chirrut hates the locked section with its vast secrets that can only be known to a few, those with the proper training and robes and keys. He has not been able to pester Master Adair into letting him into the locked section yet. Perhaps he never will even though Master Adair is fond of him in their own way.

Master Adair, a natural at lectures once something gets them going continued, “One group decided to do a whole study about how to exchange Force energy through sex. There are at least two manuscripts about the experiment drafted by different participants. One of them likened the experience to being in tune with the universe itself. The other says that it was quite dull and everything was uncomfortable and sticky. In the end, it was decided that it was perhaps too personal of a meditative practice, especially when one considers the spectrum of sexualities across the galaxy. What works for one may not bring another any closer to a form of enlightenment. Some do not enjoy in it the least and learn nothing other than repugnance for the act itself. I sometimes wonder whether the Jedi who first decreed the order against attachments were sex-repulsed and taking their discomfort out in somewhat irresponsible ways. I do not know. We do not have the proper documentation.”

“So I should not talk of sex, Master?” he had asked to clarify the point because a simple question had turned into a study hour, which was unfortunately quite common in his discussions with Master Adair.

The Master made a huffing noise in their throat that Chirrut, by now, knew was a laugh and not a warning growl. “I did not mean that. I just mean that you should probably avoid phrases such as, what was the one you put in that poem for class that got you reprimanded again?”

“Your eyes spark the Force in my loins.”

“Yes,” Master Adair looked him straight in the eye. “Perhaps avoid talking about sex and the Force like that.”

“But that’s what it felt like. I was simply being honest.” Honesty was a virtue, and Chirrut was unsure how the Masters could have been so scandalized by it.

Master Adair made the huffing noise again and continued putting the books in the new order, which Chirrut did not think would make anything any simpler. “There is such a thing as too much honesty. You are hitting people with your words as you would your staff or your hands. It is not like training. Hit softer. Think of flower petals.”

And he had. Chirrut had spent the rest of the day in the garden smoothing his fingers over flower petals. Warmed in the sun, they felt like soft flesh in his caress, and he had taken a few with him to bed that night to trace over his hidden skin once it was dark and he was alone. He doubted it was what Master Adair had meant, but he had understood. He thought. Love and sex were, perhaps, fragile things, delicate, but stronger than they seemed. Best spoken about in confidence instead of out loud in front of everyone.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. He still hadn’t decided. It was all strange.)

Lost in his own thoughts about sex--awkward--the sound of the man clearing his throat startles Chirrut a little, and he glances over his shoulder to catch the shy flash of the smile those lips were built to make. “Jedi Master Kenobi is a long honorific, isn’t it?”

“It’s to differentiate you from our masters.” He does not go into the fact that this is mostly for the comfort of the masters of the Temple of the Whills who do not want to be too closely associated with the lost cousins instead of the other way around. He will let Kenobi decide why it was instilled.

“Hmmm,” the man makes the noise and settles his hands into his sleeves. It is a gesture that Chirrut has seen in his own masters and guardians many times, and he wants to stop. He wants to back Kenobi into a corner and fire questions at him until he can suss out all the ways in which the Whills and the Jedi are alike as well as where they fall apart. Trees that wound together at the base and then shifted, each searching for sunlight in their own way.

Chirrut continues walking and pointedly does not think about Kenobi’s eyes or the curve of his neck or the way his lips looked, inviting when curled up. How he is quiet, quiet, but loud in the Force, like thousands of bells all tinkling together. Loud but soft.

“Would it break your rules if I asked you to call me Obi-Wan?”

That makes Chirrut stop in the middle of the hallway, and he feels the way that the Jedi stops just a touch too close, breath on his neck for half a second, before he gingerly, politely, steps back to create more space. He is careful, this Kenobi, very careful, as though everything around him is made of spun glass and he is worried about ruining it. Is it just because he is in a new place or is it just how he is made?

“You do not have to,” the Jedi pauses as though wondering what he is allowed to call him and then blusters on. “I just thought it might be less of a mouthful.”

“Chirrut,” he states, simply, as though it were nothing, which it is. Nothing. Nothing special. Just his name. It’s fine. It’s fine for it to be in the Jedi’s mouth, to fall over those lips from his tongue. It’s fine. It doesn’t make his stomach or his heart somersault at all, he tells himself as though the thinking of it will make it true, will make it fine. “You can call me Chirrut, especially if I’m calling you Obi-Wan.”

The man grins again, and it is bright, sure, true.

“Only when we are alone. I must continue to call you Jedi Master Kenobi in front of anyone else.”

Obi-Wan unfolds his hands from his sleeves and puts them up in a gesture that Chirrut reads as delight, understanding. And then he does something unexpected, he switches languages, he speaks in middle Jedhan. “Of course. I understand. That’s fine. I don’t mind.”

Chirrut tilts his head at him, in curiosity, in awe. Not just because of what he is but because of all the things that he had not expected. He is very young. And he is very handsome. Polite and careful and soft looking but sad. From the way the masters talk about the Jedi, he had expected haughty and distant, aloof and cold. He had expected disdain for the Whills and himself. Or at least a quiet pity. He never expected to hear his language on those lips, had resigned himself to speaking in Basic for the duration of the Jedi’s stay. “Do you all know Jedhan?” he asks, falling back into the familiar patterns of his normal speech.

The man shakes his head, smiles now in an apology as though he doesn’t know what else to do, how other to behave than to smile. “No, but I like languages. My master,” the sadness increases, and Chirrut thinks the seas in his eyes threaten to tumble, “always encouraged me to stretch my interests beyond the norm. He said that if I had a gift for something, I should use it, and languages are easy for me and I like them. So I use that gift in his honor.”

“Your master is gone?” It’s not the response he’s supposed to have, this question, but it’s the one he holds onto.

Obi-Wan swallows, but his face does not tighten, he does not yield or disappear. He stays there, clear, like a pane of glass. “Yes.”

Simple. Stalwart. No Jedi riddles. Chirrut more than likes him now, feels more than the thrill of his attractiveness in his throat and his groin. There is a growing respect, unfolding like petals. “I am very sorry to hear that. It sounds like he was a wise man.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes he was brash. Sometimes he was unkind. He was, after all, just a man.” Obi-Wan doesn’t need to say that these failings did not matter, did not diminish his master in his eyes. It is evident. He was just a man, but he was also Obi-Wan’s hero, and there is a hole in him, there is a sadness in him that exists because his master does not any longer.

Are you lonely, Chirrut wants to ask but stops himself. “Then I am sad that I cannot meet him.”

Obi-Wan smiles despite the glint of tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he mumbles as though he does not know what else to say. “Thank you.” The moment hangs there, suspended, and Obi-Wan puts his hands back in his sleeves, and looks away from Chirrut, who knows he is staring too openly, too interested, taking in the hall that stretches out in front of them hung with tapestries, filled with small windows that let in light and the cold wind, and the electric lamps that flicker and die because wiring doesn’t work correctly on Jedha for many reasons but especially because of the wind and the chill.

Chirrut waits, quiet for once because he is off-kilter and because he is studying the other man, the look of his neck, the way his hair puffs a little, the body lost in layers of fabric the same creams and tans as clothing that Chirrut has worn, wears still. It is silent, but it does not feel uncomfortable or strained. He is not impatient. He is curious, waiting, wonders what Obi-Wan sees all around them.

“I like your temple,” Obi-Wan says after a moment, and Chirrut thinks it sounds genuine.

“Oh, this hallway is nothing special. There are lots of more interesting things here.” He swallows, throat tight when being charming is normally second nature to him. “If you want to see them. Unless you would rather rest before the meeting. I know it was a long journey.” Chirrut does not fly, has never asked for a lesson or even considered taking one, but he studies star charts and astronavigation along with every other initiate. He knows that even traveling at lightspeed, the trip would have taken a bit. Jedha is far and not just in distance. There is a sort of philosophical shift to consider as well, a lifestyle change. These things can be just as exhausting as hours on a ship in the sky. He thinks. He does not know. Chirrut has never left the moon, never even left the city, feels as moored to the temple as the temple is moored into the plateau and the kyber caves beneath them.

“Longer for some than others,” Obi-Wan answers, and it is almost something like a riddle. But it is also like something Chirrut might say, quick-witted, bright smile, and he likes it just the same. “I would like to see more of your temple if you’re still willing to show me.” Something hangs in the air unsaid, and Chirrut is clever enough to figure it out. If he is allowed to show him, the Jedi means, and Chirrut once again wonders at the great amount of politeness that hangs off the other man as surely as one of his robes. “Right now, however, I think it is best to show me the room. Your master indicated that there was only time for a brief rest before the council convenes, and it would not reflect well on me if I missed it to explore.”

When Obi-Wan blinks, the sunlight catches his eyelashes, and they shimmer and glow in a way that all the kyber Chirrut has ever seen do not. The kyber shines blue, white, silver, a pale, cool sort of thing like running your hands through clear, crisp water. Obi-Wan’s hair glimmers gold and red, warm, like sunsets, like fire. Chirrut looks away, hopefully before the older man can catch the slight hint of a blush on his cheeks and neck, and begins to head down the hall again toward the quarters. “They can’t start without you, hmmm? Have they given me the job of being the guide for the most illustrious Jedi?” It feels strange not to place lost cousin next to the word when spoken aloud, especially in Jedhan. Chirrut is proud of himself for managing.

The comment makes Obi-Wan chuckle, and the sound is warm. “No, I am sorry to disappoint. I was barely allowed to come on this trip at all. It was a last minute invitation that they expected me to decline.”

Of all the things that he was expecting, candor was not one of them, either, or soft chuckles or comments that are just this side of self-deprecating. He wonders what other misconceptions they have about the Jedi and whether they are untrue for the lot of them or just for the one that trails along at a polite and leisurely pace near him, whose eyes keep scanning the walls and the hall as though everything he sees is interesting and wonderful. “Maybe there’s time to prove them wrong.”

“Perhaps so.” Even in Jedhan, the tone is refined, the words are neat and orderly, stacked like perfect bricks in a perfect house, and Chirrut would like to ask questions about where Obi-Wan is from suddenly as well as about the Jedi order. The man inside the robes has become vastly more intriguing than the robes themselves in quite a number of ways, some that Chirrut is pointedly going to attempt to not think about at the moment for many reasons.

The big one, of course, is that Obi-Wan is a Jedi, and the Jedi shun attachments, think them base and low. There is no sense in pursuing the attraction that he feels, the draw. There is no sense in it. And Obi-Wan is leaving in two weeks or less. There is no sense in attempting to build a bridge on ground rife with earthquakes and sinkholes. Yet Chirrut knows that he will try because he is always trying things he should not, always chasing challenges down the streets of NiJedha and onto the rooftops of the temple, climbing the highest trees, venturing the furthest into the kyber caves, diving into the deepest pools in attempts to touch the bottom. All for some small thrill that starts in his belly and then torpedos through the rest of him, leaves his entire body humming like the song of the Force in his ears. He is not trying to outrun it like some of the masters have prodded him about during his life. He is trying to match it, the energy of the Force itself, wants to burn as bright as it does.

“Have you ever seen kyber worms?” They have reached the door of the quarters, but Chirrut does not indicate this, not yet, just stops so that he can face Obi-Wan when he asks the question. Something flickers over the man’s features and then goes still, but his eyes glitter like Chirrut has offered him something special.

“I,” he starts, stops, licks his lips and smiles again. That hesitant fleeting sort of smile that runs from one side of his face to the other and then all the way up to his eyes, dancing. “No. I don’t think I’ve heard of them before. Kyber worms you say?” His fingers run over his beard again, stroking, and Chirrut thinks that it must be a nervous gesture.

Chirrut twines his hands together behind his neck to play at being easy, unconcerned, to hide his beating, reckless heart. “You can only find them in kyber caves. They eat the crystal and spin silk webs. They make the place glitter, and the Force sings differently there.”

“You hear the Force?”

“I could take you. Later. After the meeting. The caves are supposed to be off limits at night, but I know my way around. I doubt anyone would say anything if I took one of the Jedi there anyway. You’ve surely been in kyber caves before.” He thinks about the Jedi trial he has heard of, people walking aimlessly in the dark for something, alone.

“Chirrut, you can hear the Force?” Obi-Wan’s voice has gone softer if such a thing is possible, and now it is Chirrut’s turn to be the one with sad eyes.

“I don’t understand why the Jedi think it is so rare. The Force is for everyone. The Force is in everyone.”

The man looks away, at the wall, at the floor, at the door of the room like he cannot let himself be seen like this is a truth he cannot allow himself to face. “Yes, of course. We know the way of the Whills.” It is said like an apology but without the apology, and Chirrut dislikes how those words feel in his ears.

“You don’t. Not really.” He doesn’t mean to be harsh, but it’s impossible to miss the slight flinch in Obi-Wan’s shoulders and the way he doesn’t look up as though shamed. “These are your quarters. I’m sure they will have me gather you when it is time for the meeting. I will see you then.”

He turns to go. He means to go. He does not mean to linger long enough for Obi-Wan to say anything else, but his mind and his body are not in agreement. Either that or he, for once, does not move fast enough.

“I would very much like to see your kyber worms.” It is as effective as a hand reached out to hold.

Perhaps, Chirrut thinks, they are both lonely. “I’ll see what I can manage for you, Obi-Wan.”

There is the sound of the door opening and a small, discreet, “Thank you,” before it closes behind the man, leaves Chirrut in the hall, hands clenched into fists and not exactly sure what he is supposed to do or think next. He wants to go to Master Adair, but he knows they will just laugh and tell him to forget the whole thing. The master has never hidden their opinions of the Jedi from him, and they are not good. But, maybe, he thinks, as he wanders through the halls, away from the door and yet never too far, maybe neither of us know anything about the other at all. Maybe this would be a good time to learn.

 

Chirrut is unsure how long the meeting goes on. All he knows is that by the time he returns to Obi-Wan’s door one of the Guardians is there, letting him know that the Jedi Master has already been gathered for the council and that Chirrut is free to pursue his own studies for the rest of the day. In truth, he isn’t sure what to do with his time while he waits. If he goes anywhere near his peers, he knows that they will bombard him with large amounts of questions about the Jedi and what is going on, and he does not feel comfortable answering any of those at the moment. He certainly does not want to share Obi-Wan with his soft smile and burnished hair with them, the polite way that he speaks, and the slight edge of sadness that clings to him always. No, Chirrut is not interested in setting those things out for others to sort through. Not yet. He would rather hold them close and see what may or may not occur.

Nothing will occur. He is sure of that. The Jedi have rules that will keep anything from happening even if Chirrut would like to press his lips against that mouth meant for smiling. Nothing will happen. The Jedi will leave in a handful of days. He should not pay any attention to the strange stuttering of his heart. But, perhaps, he can learn something from the other man. Maybe, just possibly, he can make a friend.

The day passes in blinks and tricks of time while Chirrut wanders the archive and the gardens, afraid to stray too far from the sight of the masters or guardians lest he be needed but also in a bit of a daydream, floaty state. He does not know what they are expecting of him because the role was only loosely explained. Perhaps they themselves do not know. He wonders what the meeting is about. Something important, obviously. He had asked Master Adair, but they merely shrugged it off and went back to the books as if they didn’t care in the least.

Chirrut cares. Even if he hadn’t been assigned as the guide to the most handsome one of the bunch, he would have cared. The Jedi have left them in relative solitude for long years. Why would they choose now to open a dialogue? Something must be the cause of it. He wonders if it is good or ill, settles himself into his preferred position on the ground under the large tree in the temple garden and chants himself into deep meditation, reaching for the Force and trying to see, trying to hear what it will tell him if it will tell him anything at all.

They are linked, Chirrut and the Force, but that does not mean it listens to him, bends to his will. Chirrut would never ask that of it anyway. That is not the way of the Whills. The Force gives what it wants to, takes what it wants to. They are all adrift on its waters. Those who fight against that are destined to drown. Eventually. (This is one of the things that they whisper about the Jedi, that they will drown one day or another, swept into the very tides they try to tame and swim against. It is futile to try and control water. It will always win in the end.) The goal of the Whills is to allow the flow of the Force to take you where it will. You can stretch out on it, linger on its swirls and eddies, see where it goes, but fighting against it, trying to control it or control your path in it is futile.

He stretches, he breathes, and it carries him. It does not carry him long or far. If anything, it seems to create a whirlpool under him, the same image and idea repeating over and over. There are eyes in the darkness that glimmer. There is a heart that beats, burns, fiercely. Not the way that Obi-Wan’s eyes look nor the way that his hair shines. This is different, darker, smoother. Less like the sun, more like light on kyber, the way the caves look at night, lit by their own strange glow and nothing else. Something moves just beyond the veil, at the periphery of his vision, far off but getting closer with every breath of air that he pushes from his lungs, every ebb and flow of the Force, thick and close all around him, less like water and more like some sort of sugary confection from the kitchens, holding, trapping.

Chirrut holds a hand out, fingers splayed, expecting nothing, taken aback when he brushes them across something, feels it, solid. Solid and slightly rough. Like stone. Like running his fingers over stone. His heart beats faster, and it is echoed by a sound from all around him that falls into time with his own. He does not know what stands in front of him in the darkness with those eyes and that shimmer, with the rough-hewn skin. He does not know anything at all. And the Force does not seem interested in telling.

Right when he manages to build the words in his throat to lose, to ask who or what is in front of him, something jars him, pulls him quickly, almost too quickly, from the Force trance back to Jedha, back to where he sits under the tree in the garden, back to the feel of the cool wind on his face. Chirrut leans over, gasping for air, head ringing and chest heaving from the exertion of coming back all at once after having drifted so very far away. When he presses his palms to his eyes, they come away wet with sweat and tears, neither of which he realized was happening. Slowly, slowly, piece by piece, little by little, he settles back into himself, recognizes the feel of someone sitting close, hand on his shoulder, hears a voice repeating his name, though it is far away, and he cannot recognize the tones as belonging to anyone he knows.

“Chirrut, are you okay?”

“Fine. Fine. I’m fine.” His voice, when he finds it, sounds like it comes from a throat parched, worn from screaming or sobbing, and he presses his fingers against his cheeks again to feel the tears still streaked there.

Someone is in front of him now, and the hand on his shoulder slides down to his elbow. When he blinks to focus, he finds the clear, sad, blue eyes of the Jedi Master in front of him. “Excuse me for saying so but you do not look fine. I could,” Obi-Wan glances around the garden as though he expects to locate all of the answers there. If Chirrut did not feel so weary and worn, it would be enough to make him chuckle. As it is, he does not have the energy for so much as a smile. “Should I get you to a medic? Healer? Medbay?” He says each word as though he doubts whether or not such a thing exists in the Whills, as if he isn’t sure how they deal with illness and injury. At another time such a reaction would make Chirrut cross, but the ire will not rise.

His limbs are heavy, and it is cold. It is dark. Chirrut wonders, fleetingly, how long he has been outside, but it does not matter much. It was long enough for the chill of Jedha to work itself into his body, long enough for the sun to sink away and plunge them all in darkness. “That won’t be necessary,” he says, though it does not seem to do anything to ease the concern writ large across Obi-Wan’s gentle features. It’s not until he moves that Chirrut notices there is extra weight on him and sees Obi-Wan’s outer robes have been added to his own. “Tea and a warm shower will do as well as anything.”

“What happened?” Obi-Wan’s eyes are large, luminous, but the glints of the moon have washed the fine flecks of gold out of his hair and his beard. Now he looks like something otherworldly, like something from all those ghost stories he and his peers used to talk about as younglings.

And Chirrut remembers. The Force creation. Remembers in a flicker and a flash and then shakes it away like nothing because it was nothing. Just a parable, just something made up in order to impart an important lesson. Nothing more than that. Nothing special. (The creation, he remembers, had a shard of kyber in its heart.) He remembers and forgets again.

“Why were you outside so long? I hadn’t seen you. I asked after you and some of the brothers.”

“No, we do not call each other that.”

“Some of the others,” Obi-Wan corrects himself, “said that you were outside. Meditating. I don’t understand. From what I’ve read about Jedha, it’s unwise to stay in the elements after dark unless you’re properly attired. You do not appear to be properly attired. Why wouldn’t they have reminded you to come in?”

The man’s words are hurried, and it makes his Jedhan sound less sharp, more mottled, more like someone who is learning a language. It makes him sound human and flawed, easier to understand, not a Jedi but a man. Like his sad eyes. Chirrut scrubs a hand over his face to brush off the last of the tears before they threaten to freeze to his skin. It is not winter yet, and he knows that it will not be that cold, but it is better not to risk it. “We feel it is unwise to disturb those who are meditating. We drift. On the Force, we drift. It takes us different places, sometimes very far away from our bodies, and there is a fear that, if bothered, we won’t make it back in time. Don’t you drift?” he asks, trying to lock his gaze with the other man’s, but it keeps sliding off. He is too tired to hold it, too exhausted to tread those blue waters.

There are five seconds in which Obi-Wan looks completely horrified and aghast before he manages to wrest control of his face and answers, “It’s not quite the same.” Then he holds up a hand as though knowing Chirrut is moments away from asking for further information. “It’s not important now. Let’s focus on getting you inside first. Perhaps there will be time for questions later.”

The way that Obi-Wan helps him to his feet, and supports him as he walks reminds Chirrut of collecting younglings to put them to bed, of being taken to bed himself by masters or guardians when he was little and had fallen asleep in one place or another when he was drowsy and small. There is the same sense of care there as well as a knowledge in bones and muscles that the thing being supported is small and breakable. This amuses him because he is neither of these things, but Obi-Wan doesn’t seem to know this fact yet and instead treats him as something delicate. Chirrut laughs but does not try and extricate himself.

“What is funny?” Obi-Wan asks, and Chirrut looks over at him, smiles because the man’s arm is around him, fingers lingering on his waist in a supportive but ghost-like touch.

“Do you tend to a lot of younglings?”

Something changes on his features, something small and almost imperceptible that Chirrut doesn’t quite know how to parse, and he says nothing.

Chirrut continues to chuckle, though most of the humor seems to have drained away. He isn’t sure how else to react and is too tired to give it much thought. “I’m not delicate. That’s all I mean. Do you spar?”

“We have training regimens.” Left for interpretation, wide, a door flung open at the end of the hall to be taken any way he wants to.

“I meant you, Obi-Wan. Do you spar?”

This is the type of face he had expected from the Jedi, stoic, rocky, a plain piece of paper flapping in the wind with nothing written on it. It pains him to see it now, and Chirrut wonders how he can take it back. Like always it seems he has gone too far. One day he will learn to stop before he tumbles everything over. One day that is not today.

Eventually, though, Obi-Wan answers. “Yes.”

Chirrut has been guiding Obi-Wan through the corridors of the temple, beelining to the kitchens where he can pester the masters on duty into finding him tea and bread and something warm to eat, something to prod life back into his tired body so that he can make his own way to the shower and then to bed. “Would you spar with me?” he asks when they are close enough to their destination that he will be able to finish the journey there alone if he winds up offending the other with the request. “None of those mind tricks I’ve heard you Jedi can use, though. Those aren’t fair at all.”

That pulls a breathy laugh from Obi-Wan and something in him seems to relax, to give just a little. He does not deposit Chirrut against the closest wall to leave in a huff. He even smiles. A little. Barely at all but enough to count. “You’re not allowed to use them either.”

“We don’t have them. We don’t do that.” Chirrut catches himself before he potentially elaborates on the subject before he lets Obi-Wan know exactly what the Whills thinks of the Jedi and their uses for the Force.

“I would say that some of you are possessed of unfair tricks of your own whether it’s purposeful or not.”

Chirrut isn’t sure how to take the statement, what it means. He is too tired to follow the direction so he lets it float past him, waves goodbye to it, turns a corner to something else. “Does that mean you’ll spar with me?”

“Yes, Chirrut, that means I’ll spar with you. Once you’re feeling better.” There is that strange concern again, the type that Chirrut associates with elders taking care of children, and he does not like the idea that the Jedi is utilizing that with him.

“All I need is tea. And rest. We can spar tomorrow.”

“Is there an incentive for winning?”

Now, this is an interesting development. “Would you like one?”

Obi-Wan nods, and he is bright again. In the flickering lights of the kitchen and the fire from the stove, he is gold and rust again, arms crossed over his chest and one hand smoothing over his beard while Chirrut sits on a stool and watches and waits. “Very much,” Obi-Wan says and then after a moment adds, “If I beat you, I would like you tell me how the Force talks to you and what you saw, where you drifted, tonight.”

“Is that all?” Chirrut asks, arms folded in his lap as he watches the man. “Okay. That is a deal. If I win,” he is not worried, he will win, he always wins, “you will come and see the kyber worms with me.”

“I was going to do that anyway.”

Chirrut holds up a hand to indicate that he is not finished, and Obi-Wan quiets immediately. Such a polite man. It almost seems a pity to set him up this way. “And I win a kiss from you.”

The color seems to drain from Obi-Wan’s face as he presses his lips in a line and looks at the floor, almost shy but not quite. Trapped more than anything else. And Chirrut immediately feels poorly about it. “My code only really allows for one of those things.”

“I didn’t know the Jedi code was so against kyber worms.”

“Chirrut.”

There is a tone he has heard in the voice of countless masters, and it makes his shoulders stiffen. “You don’t have to agree to the terms.”

Obi-Wan clears his throat and moves toward the door, hands folded in his sleeves. “I will see you tomorrow, and we can discuss this at greater length. I feel like you might not be up to making the best judgments at the moment so it would be best to put this discussion on pause.”

It is not until he has disappeared into the dimness of the hallway and Chirrut is wrapping his hands around a cup of steaming taurine tea that he remembers he is still draped in Obi-Wan’s outer robe.

 

As it turns out, there is no time for talking the next day or the ones thereafter. Whatever is being discussed during the council sessions seems to be of the utmost importance, and it runs rather long. Chirrut meets Obi-Wan at his door in the morning (he returned the robe the next day with what was meant to be a sheepish grin but was too broad, too wide to properly convey any sense of shame about what had happened) and walks him to the door of the gathering hall and then does not see him again until dinner where they sit across from each other at the long table that has been set up at the front of the room specifically for this purpose. They cannot talk there, though, in front of all the other Jedi Masters and the members of the Whills because Chirrut knows every single one of them would probably take Obi-Wan’s side and be disgraced by him as well. Even though it is only a simple, silly little bet. For the most part. He would be lying if he said that he isn’t interested in sparring with the man, in winning, and in stealing that kiss in the humid dark while the kyber worms sparkle above and below and all around them.

Yet there is just never any time. The moment the nightly meal has commenced, the Jedi and the Whills masters alike take their leave of the dining hall to go back into the chambers, and Chirrut doesn’t see Obi-Wan again until the process repeats itself the next day. At this rate, the man will simply disappear from the temple one afternoon without Chirrut even getting the chance to bid him farewell, and he doesn’t know why that makes part of his chest feel oddly and ringingly hollow like a drum or a well-made loaf of bread after baking, resounding like an empty hall when tapped.

As on that first day, he spends much of the next several curled under the tree in the garden, reading or meditating but not drifting, not allowing himself to sink into the Force and see where it takes him. It’s not because he’s scared. Chirrut Imwe is rarely scared about anything. It is more that he does not wish to drift and let the Force replace one vision with another as it is wont to do. The more time he can spend thinking about the first one, the more he can write it down and try to parse it into usable information, the better the discussion about it with Obi-Wan will go. If he chooses to bring it up at all since there is no way that the Jedi will best him in combat, especially if he is not allowed to utilize his strange mind tricks. No, Chirrut is not concerned about those eyes in the dark, that flickering, pulsing chunk of kyber. Though he wonders over why it made him think about the Force creation, a tale that has not crossed his mind in so many years once he discovered what it was all about. Why would the Force choose now to pull out such a strange little lesson, a parable about gratitude and faith? That does perplex him. More even than the way his heart speeds up a little when he catches sight of Obi-Wan’s blue eyes, which are getting increasingly agitated with each day that passes. He wonders if that is a sign that the talks are not going well, and then finds himself trying to figure out which side might be wrong in the whole thing. (Though it is probably the Jedi.)

On the sixth day spent huddled under the tree, book in hand, Chirrut is caught off guard by the sound of someone clearing their throat near him. The number of people who can catch him by surprise has not grown in a number of years, after all, thanks to his training as well as his sensitivity to the Force, but somehow Obi-Wan has managed it. He is standing there, hair unruly and puffier than usual as though he has spent the last several hours running his hands through it animatedly and a slight scowl is plastered on his normally pleasant face. Instead of keeping his hands discreetly folded in his sleeves, he is drumming his fingers on his thighs in-between stroking them over his beard. Even without an ounce of Force sensitivity, his agitation pours from every inch of his body. At the moment, though, he is a dark cloud on the horizon and while Chirrut is unable to get a sense of why, the frustration itself is oppressive and thick, the way the air gets heavy during the rare thunderstorms that grace Jedha’s surface maybe twice a year.

“I was wondering,” Obi-Wan shifts his weight from one foot to the other as he stands there. The lack of a proper greeting also strikes Chirrut as being slightly out of place, but he makes no comment, just sits, still and quiet, looking up and waiting for whatever it is that the Jedi needs or wants to ask. He clears his throat and begins again, “I was wondering if you were still interested in that spar.”

Chirrut tries to restrain the look of delight that wants to fly across his face and fails spectacularly. “What about the terms?”

Obi-Wan sighs like a man resigned to his fate, and Chirrut isn’t sure whether that is a good thing or a bad one. “Accepted. All terms accepted.”

Oh, he is going to win. He is going to win, and then he will know what it is to kiss a Jedi, whether it will feel like brushing his lips over kyber, whether it will feel like the sun, or whether it will be just like kissing anyone else. Chirrut has courted and kissed several people, all other initiates of the Whills, all of them lovely and near his age. There was no spark with any of them, nothing except the physical, which was why none of those relationships had amounted to much at all. Just fumbling, hurried kissing and hands pressed against each other’s bodies in the dark. Just sighing and questing and yearning but without something there at the core of it. Small acts of loving but without love cobbled together in the center of it. There are many things that Chirrut has learned from the masters, from his lessons, from the endless supply of knowledge in the archives, but this one has eluded him. It seems that no one has ever found the proper equation for love, and all the poets just make things ever more confusing rather than clear.

(“Love is no kyber pool. It’s not clear. You cannot see the bottom. The depths are confusing and potentially go on forever. Sometimes it can be a trap, deadly, but you never know because you cannot see,” Master Adair had told him when he asked about it several years ago. “Sex, comparatively, is easy. It is, at its most basic, fitting forms together with a specific goal in mind, pleasure, procreation, etc. Even though it can be difficult to perfect, the premise of the thing is typically rather simple. Love and sex are not the same thing, though it can be difficult to differentiate between the two of them, especially when you are young.” And stupid went unsaid, but Chirrut heard it hang in the air and he couldn’t quite deny it.

“What is love then, Master?”

Master Adair, in their green robes, with their slotting eyes and their huffy laugh had just stopped, fingers laid against the spine of a book for a long second as though they were very far away. “Love is different for everyone, Chirrut.”

Chirrut had sighed because this was exactly the sort of thing he did not want to hear. He had found the master because he knew that Adair, unlike some of the rest of them, would not stop his musings in their tracks with some excuse about it not being appropriate or unbefitting of an initiate of the Whills to voice such things aloud. Master Adair believed that knowledge was best shared, questions were best answered. The only thing the master had not been willing to discuss, up to that point, were the books in the locked section, but that was different. That was less their decision and simply them keeping with the rules of the Whills. This, though, this was rather annoying. “So you won’t answer the question.”

“It’s less that I won’t and more that I can’t. I cannot tell you what love will be for you. I can only tell you what love is like for me, and my answer might make it difficult for you to find your own.”

“Love sounds an awful lot like the Force.”

Master Adair had made their huffing, laughing noise at that, but it was not in derision. It was less that the master was laughing at him and more that they were simply amused by something. “Love is an awful lot like the Force. Everyone gets to the truth of it in their own way, and everyone’s truth can be different.”

“But love is in everything? Like the Force?”

There was a long moment while Master Adair steepled their fingers together and thought, eyes slotting open and closed at regular intervals. “I suppose you could say that, yes. The capacity and the desire for love exists in everything.”)

Chirrut holds a hand up, extended, open, as inviting as the smile that splits his face from ear to ear. It takes a moment before Obi-Wan takes it, and Chirrut thinks he will merely shake on it, but he does not. Instead, he holds it for a moment. “Agreed,” Chirrut says because he isn’t sure how else to react, and then he lets the Jedi offer a gentle tug to help him find his feet. The moment they stand in front of each other, though, Obi-Wan just a little bit taller, the Jedi releases his grip and folds his hands back into the sleeves of his robe.

“Yes, so, how do we go about this?” The Jedi’s voice is flat, but his eyes avoid lingering on any one thing for too long as if he is unsettled by something.

Plans and scenarios are already filtering through Chirrut’s head, which might not be fair, but it also isn’t anything he can properly help. There are reasons why Chirrut always wins his spars and one of those is because of his ability to suss out his opponent, find their weak points and then exploit them whether it is physically or verbally. The Guardians have accused him of fighting unfairly but are also quick to point out that in real combat the opponent will not always act honorably. It is best to be ready for anything, to divorce yourself from taking things personally, to always be on your guard for anything that might occur. Some of his fellows have still not been able to learn this, and Chirrut quite enjoys winding them up as a result.

“If I have to teach you how to spar, you may as well concede now. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. I’ll make sure to let everyone know that you made a valiant effort, though.” The teasing earns him a slight quirk in the corners of the Jedi’s mouth, and it is not really a smile but it is close enough that Chirrut thinks it counts as a win. Before the other can say anything, he is striding across the garden toward the outdoor training rooms arranged one next to the other, watching Obi-Wan over his shoulder as he goes. “I know what you meant. We have indoor and outdoor rooms, but these are probably the least likely to be occupied. And the chances of an audience are slimmer.” As much as Chirrut would love to have the temple there to watch him overtake the Jedi, he doubts that Obi-Wan would feel the same, and he is willing to spare some of his pride. It is the gentlemanly thing to do, after all.

Obi-Wan follows at a leisurely pace but there is something about the set of his shoulders that continues to radiate that sense of frustration. Something has happened, probably with the council meeting, and Chirrut wonders whether the other man will tell him about it, whether he is allowed to talk about the proceedings to someone not involved with them at all.

“What changed your mind?” Chirrut asks once they are inside the room with the door secured. He has taken off his shoes as well as both outer and inner robes such that he is only dressed in his loose-fitting pants, which he proceeds to roll up slightly for better range of movement.

At the door, still shifting his weight, still looking tight as a spring, Obi-Wan remains fully clothed, fingers stroking through his beard, looking altogether out of place and unsure how next to proceed. “I find myself with an excess of energy.”

“Is the meeting going so poorly?” He slouches onto the ground to go through a languid series of stretches.

Obi-Wan finally plucks at the fastenings for his outer robe and then shrugs it off to hang it delicately from a post near the door. “You know I’m not allowed to talk about that.”

Chirrut looks over to him from where he has his legs out in front of him, bending his body over to press his forehead against them. “No, I wasn’t aware. I figured as much, but we were never told what we were not allowed to ask.” When Obi-Wan doesn’t ask why, he continues, “It’s because most of us aren’t going to ask you anything at all.”

After standing awkwardly for another moment, Obi-Wan drops to the sandy ground to start going through his own stretches even though he remains encased in the majority of his bulk of robes. “I have noticed that most of the members of the Whills will not approach us or talk to us. Some of them will not even look at us except askance or when they think we will not see them. Is there a reason for this, Chirrut?”

“I thought you said you knew the ways of the Whills?”

The allusion to their conversation from the first day results in a slight flush rising to Obi-Wan’s pale cheeks, right along the line of his burnished beard, adding another shade of pink to his lovely complexion. “I am sorry about that.”

There is a moment where he considers walking over and showing Obi-Wan how to properly warm up for the spar because his Jedi stretches do not seem like much. Chirrut knows that, at the core, their fighting styles share a history, but it is hard to see looking at him right now. He also wants to recommend shucking additional layers because it is going to be simple for him to grab onto flowing robes and winding pieces of fabric. But this is a competition and he should not help. By the same token, however, the victory will feel like sawdust in his mouth, course and devoid of flavor, if he wins so easily because of a wide rift in their competency. “I should apologize for that one. I was baiting you. They are wary of the Jedi.” Lost cousins. Force blind. Users of the Force. Impatient. Selfish. He thinks about all the ways the masters and the guardians have described the Jedi over the years. Rash. Lusting after the limelight. Too proud to take the time to understand. Wrong. None of these things make as much sense as they used to, especially not when he looks at Obi-Wan who seems like the kind of man who cares an awful lot, who would like to get things right, who believes in something that he believes in, just in a slightly different way. Does that make it wrong? This would have been a simpler question a week ago.

“Are they afraid of us?” Obi-Wan asks and there is surprise in his tone.

Chirrut springs to his feet to begin examining the selection of staffs lined up along one of the walls. They will not be as known to him as his own, but he does not feel like taking the time to fetch his from his room and the difference should not be enough to result in him losing the match. “I wouldn’t go that far. The Whills and the Jedi do not see eye to eye on a number of things, which you know, and I think that most of ours regard yours as,” he sighs, not really wanting to give voice to the words but does anyway, “lost. That you have strayed too far from the original teachings, from the truth. They also think that you are reckless in your use of the Force.” It is a simplified version but truthful enough.

Obi-Wan’s face looks slightly crestfallen, concerned, and Chirrut wonders what he had expected to hear. That the Jedi were feared? That they were looked on in awe and beings lacking their powers shrunk from their presence because they did not feel like they were enough? He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to ask because he would rather not open the door to disappointing or hurting the Jedi further.

“I wasn’t aware of that,” Obi-Wan says after a drawn-out moment, clears his throat again and stands. There is dust and sand in his robes, which he shakes out with quick, concise flicks of his wrist. It almost surprises Chirrut that he doesn’t click his tongue in irritation at the dirt.

“What do the Jedi think of us?” It is only a fair question to ask considering the information that he has just given. Chirrut spins the staff through the air as he watches Obi-Wan and waits for the answer.

Something tics in the man’s cheek, a muscle spasm that mars the perfection of the calm look he has managed to plaster across his face, and he sighs. “I don’t want to get into that now.”

“But you’ll tell me later?”

Obi-Wan’s look is halfway between pained and acceptance as though he knows what it is like to be saddled with the company of someone who asks an endless spiral of questions and is never quite content with the answers. “Perhaps. For now, I would rather we get on with this match.”

The sound of the lightsaber kicking into life takes Chirrut’s breath away for a second but only just. Grinning, he twirls the staff again before holding it across his shoulders behind his neck and bows to Obi-Wan before jutting his head toward the arena of packed clay and sand in the middle of the room. “After you.”

He is going to win.

 

He does not win. Neither of them does. After two hours have gone by of first one and then the other of them holding a slight advantage without either of them pulling ahead enough to properly defeat the other, they call it a tie and sink slowly to the ground on either side of the arena. The prolonged exertion has resulted in Obi-Wan also shedding layers of clothing during the match, and by now he is only in a thin cream colored shirt and loose pants. Chirrut sprawls onto his back on the sand in order to keep himself from staring at how the shirt, transparent with sweat, sticks to the planes of Obi-Wan’s body.

“I didn’t realize the Jedi’s style was so defensive,” he says because that is predominantly what Obi-Wan spent the time doing, avoiding his strikes, keeping out of the way, deflecting them when he could not move away from them in time. Obi-Wan is not faster than Chirrut, few people are faster than Chirrut, but he is deft in knowing where blows will fall and how to avoid them or make them work to his advantage. Of all the hits he attempted only half a dozen landed, which would seem preposterous if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

To his credit, Obi-Wan landed each strike he attempted, though it was not many. Most of his method seemed to be to avoid conflict, to let Chirrut tire himself out until he would be pressed and rush into things, making it easier for Obi-Wan to take him down with little effort. Though the Jedi didn’t know how great Chirrut’s own stamina was, how long he could fight, and the lack of that knowledge meant that it didn’t go to plan. Although it was a very close thing. In the end, they were both simply exhausted. If Obi-Wan had pressed it a little longer, though, Chirrut knew he would have been bested.

“Not all of them are,” Obi-Wan admits, and Chirrut is tempted to sit up so that he can look at him but does not, settles instead to just listening to his voice, the rise and fall of it while he catches his breath. “We have different styles. Most of us are proficient in one or two of them but we all have a preference. I always took to the defensive more than anything else. My master always said it suited me.”

The words that leave his mouth are barely above a whisper. “It’s protective.”

“Hmmmm?”

Chirrut uses his elbows to prop himself up enough that he can catch Obi-Wan’s eyes, those bright twin specks of blue in the middle of his face that is now completely ruddy with exertion, great dots of pink against his cheeks, hair even more mussed than before. “I said it’s protective. You fight like you’re trying to keep your opponent away from someone you’re protecting. Like there’s always another behind you, beside you. You blocked every blow you could even if they would have been glancing on you, even if you could have just angled yourself away easier than deflecting it. Like there was someone else. Always.” Chirrut can feel a flicker in the Force that surrounds Obi-Wan, a ripple through it that bunches up like fingers in a duvet before smoothing out again, a reflection of the way Obi-Wan’s brow furrows and then relaxes.

“Another astute observation.” Then he leaves it there, abandoned. “I’m surprised you’re only an initiate of the Whills, Chirrut.”

Chirrut frowns and settles back onto the ground, not wanting to watch Obi-Wan’s face when he answers. “They won’t let me take the Guardian trials yet.”

“Why not?”

“They want me to consider another path. They say I could have my pick of them, the high masters. To them, my becoming a Guardian would be a waste of talent.”

Obi-Wan clears his throat, and Chirrut can hear him standing up, shaking sand from his clothing, sense him move around the room, retrieving all the pieces he took off during their spar. “Would it be? I’m sorry. I haven’t quite wrapped my head around the variations in the temple.”

Chirrut closes his eyes. “It’s okay. The Guardians main function is to protect the temple, the Whills, the kyber, the younglings. The Masters are more.” He shrugs, though the motion is lost, for the most part, just another rustle of sand under his shoulders. “Specified. Masters have certain jobs, disciplines. They serve various roles in the Whills. Some of them are diplomats and some of them rule over temple doctrine. Some of them teach.”

“You don’t want to do those things?” Obi-Wan asks, simple, kind, and when Chirrut opens his eyes the older man is standing above him, hands back in the sleeves of his outer robes, looking down at him and it is like looking up into the endless blue sky. “You want to protect. You want to defend.”

“I’m not that altruistic. I enjoy physical training. I like mastering the forms and the blows. I want to protect, yes, but less because I want to guard those who are unable to defend themselves and more because I like the thrill of it. The Guardians have a more exciting job.”

“Ah,” Obi-Wan says, that sound that Chirrut has heard many times before in the mouths of many masters, but from Obi-Wan, it sounds less disappointed than what he is used to.

“Does that seem selfish to you, oh wise Jedi master?” Chirrut cannot keep the smile from tugging the corners of his lips up. “Does that seem like the wrong reason to do a thing? For adventure.”

“That’s not for me to say.”

Chirrut flips himself up onto his feet in a smooth motion, quick like a flash of lightning, the sort of quickness that he thought would give him the upper hand and then let him down because he had never expected Obi-Wan to be good enough to counter him. “I’m asking you to say,” he presses when he’s on his feet and close enough that he could reach out and press his palm flat to the other man’s chest.

Obi-Wan, ever careful, takes two steps back. “That’s not for me to say, but my master always encouraged people to follow their gifts. From what I’ve seen, you excel at fighting, yes, but you are also possessed of a quick mind, and the Force talks to you in some way that I don’t quite understand. I am not anyone who can tell you what you’re meant for here, Chirrut, because I don’t know enough about the Whills to advise.”

“I think you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. I think you’re afraid that you’ll give the wrong advice and someone will blame you for it when it goes poorly. You’re not just defending people who aren’t there; you’re defending yourself as well.” It sounds harsher than he means for it to, and he winces when he sees how Obi-Wan’s shoulder slump a little.

“I’m used to people not heeding my words when I have their best interests at heart,” Obi-Wan says, and then turns to the door.

“No one won,” Chirrut says to his back, “but I would still like to show you the kyber worms. I would even be willing to tell you about the Force vision. If you wanted.”

Obi-Wan stops and there is that tightening through his shoulders and back again. Chirrut wonders what it would feel like under his fingers if he laid his hand against the other’s skin. Would it be a tremor or an earthquake? “And the kiss?”

“Would be gladly taken if you’re gifting.”

“I’m too old for you. And far too Jedi.”

Chirrut thinks that maybe that means something else. A man who learns languages for worlds he is visiting briefly. A man who fights for two hours on the defensive, only landing blows when necessary. A man who is quiet and calm and has eyes like sad seas and a mouth that doesn’t smile as often as it should. A man willing to concede when he is wrong. None of this feels like far too Jedi considering what Chirrut has always been told about the Jedi. He thinks, perhaps, it means that Obi-Wan is too scared of what it might mean to let someone close. Always guarding, after all. He makes a noise of consideration in his throat, and Obi-Wan does not turn around. “Perhaps. But perhaps just wait and see what the Force tells you in the moment.”

Obi-Wan’s shoulders sag slightly, and he bows his head as though the ground is interesting, as though all the riddles of the universe are captured in the loose granules of Jedha sand, and they might be. They might very well be. Jedha is ancient and holy, covered in kyber, threaded through with the Force. The Jedi, Chirrut thinks, would do well to remember that, to remember the Whills as related and just as holy as they think themselves.

“The Force doesn’t work like that,” Obi-Wan says after a moment.

“It does. You’ve just forgotten how to listen instead of asking.”

It is quiet enough that he can hear how fast Obi-Wan’s breathing is in the arena, the noise of his fingers through his beard. “After dinner then,” the Jedi says following a prolonged moment and then slips through the door to head back into the temple.

Chirrut watches him as long as he can before settling the staff onto the rack on the wall, though he stays in the arena for about twenty more minutes, his eyes memorizing the flurry of footsteps in the sand, trying to find the pattern, to see the why and how of Obi-Wan’s motions and movements as well as whether there is a way to best them in case another opportunity to spar arises.

After dinner turns out to be harder than expected. Dinner itself is a strange affair with the other Jedi Masters, none of whom Chirrut has been properly introduced to though he has heard their names spoken at irregular intervals, shooting dark glances in Obi-Wan’s direction while the man pointedly ignores them and pushes his food around his plate like a sullen teenager. The Whills masters seem to be trying their best, speaking in soft tones, telling the gathered guests details about the food in front of them, how it is grown in the gardens, the pilgrims who brought the plants from distant planets to introduce them to Jedhan soil, anything they can to try and lighten the mood, but it doesn’t work. The other Jedi continue to glare at Obi-Wan as though he has single-handedly ruined something, and Obi-Wan, in turn, continues to pretend like they aren’t even there at all. Chirrut, taking his cue from Obi-Wan, stays seated when the meal comes to a close and everyone else files out of the door to disappear into the winding, labyrinth-like halls of the temple. He knows that the lot of them normally retreat for further discussion after dinner, but if that is the case now, Obi-Wan makes no move to join them.

“Have you gotten yourself exiled from the council?” Chirrut asks when the room is clear of everyone except the younglings on kitchen duty who scamper from one end of the dining hall to the other, cleaning the tables and collecting any forgotten dishware that needs to be washed.

Obi-Wan’s face is uncommonly sullen, an expression that doesn’t suit the softness of his eyes or the pull of his mouth, and Chirrut would like to wipe it away. “I have disagreed with my brethren, and we are taking a slight break from discussions so that I can reconsider my opinion.” The words are exceedingly polite, but Chirrut can tell that they are not Obi-Wan’s own.

He fiddles with his eating utensils for a handful of seconds before speaking. “Does that mean you were in agreement with the Whills?”

The Jedi pushes a hand through his hair as he stands, creating a reddish gold halo around his head that catches in the light. “Some of them. Your masters do not seem to feel the same compulsion to be united on every front that mine do. They each offer their own suggestions and listen to everyone else’s without overt criticism. They take things into consideration and do not simply decide on a path from the outset.” When he frowns, brow creased, mouth pulled into a line, Obi-Wan looks older than before, beaten by something, backed into a corner with no way out, and Chirrut isn’t sure he likes that look on him, that sense on him.

“What is the council meeting about?”

“I can’t tell you.” The words are exhaled on a long sigh.

Chirrut clambers to his feet to follow Obi-Wan as he heads for the door. “Would you like to? I feel like you would like to. I could keep it a secret.” He does not expound on the fact that he has little in the way of friends, mostly just peers who enjoy sparring with him or asking him for help with their lessons, but no one who comes to him just to spend time with him or talk to late into the night. We could be lonely together, he considers saying but thinks better of it. It doesn’t seem like the right time. There is no right time, he supposes, to become friends with a Jedi. Not when they are ever set on courses with no contact in mind.

“I can’t tell you,” Obi-Wan repeats, and he looks small in the large doorway of the dining hall, dwarfed by the reaching stone doors that have looked out on so many generations of Whills masters and guardians and initiates. Right now, shoulders arched in to protect his body, eyes down, Obi-Wan looks exhausted, looks like no Jedi Master at all but a boy in over his head.

Normally, he would press and pry and try to dig out the information that he wants, keen and intent on something once he puts his mind to it, but Chirrut thinks better of it in the moment as he’s watching the man with his downturned eyes, looking like the weight of the entire moon of Jedha and more has been placed on his shoulders. Now is not the time for attempts at wrangling information out of him and Chirrut changes subjects. “Do you still want to see the kyber worms?”

The corners of Obi-Wan’s mouth are soft when he looks up and nods.

Glancing quickly down the corridor, Chirrut moves off to the left, gesturing for the Jedi to follow him as they wind through hallways and tunnels, approaching the entrance to the caves. Chirrut hopes that they do not run into any Guardians because he doesn’t really want to have to explain himself to them, doesn’t want to try and convince them that he is working on some orders handed down from high instead of just his own compulsions to his own desire to see how Obi-Wan will react in the caverns, whether the sight and the thrum of the Force will take his breath away, whether he will relax or be overwhelmed by it, whether he will concede and let Chirrut kiss him, gentle, small, just a touch of lips or maybe something more. Chirrut does not want to give himself away with stuttering, which is what he thinks might happen if he has to try and explain this to anyone, why he is in the halls at night, threading silently through the twists and turns with the Jedi in tow. This was never one of the tasks set for him by the masters, but he has always been contrary.

“I probably should have inquired about this beforehand,” Obi-Wan says as they squeeze through another back corridor that has clearly not been used recently, “but is this allowed?”

“Do you want me to answer that?”

The sigh is a brush of air across the back of his neck. “Not really.”

“Because then you’d have to stop?” He wishes the corridor would allow him to do more than cast a quick glance at the other man over his shoulder.

“No, but I would feel obliged to apologize to the Whills masters at a later time.”

Chirrut laughs too loud and the sound echoes around them. He thinks he catches an answering chuckle from Obi-Wan, but it might be his imagination. “A lot of our rules are more suggestions than anything, and they’re mostly made to keep us safe. You won’t be in trouble with teacher for following me through twists and turns to head into the kyber caves after dark.”

“Then why are we taking such a circuitous route? Surely there is something more direct.”

“It’s more exciting this way.” It’s not quite a lie. This way is more exciting filled with dingy, poorly lit turns and unswept floors. But it is also free from spying eyes and unwelcome questions. Chirrut gets enough attention as it is so he could do with minimizing anything further.

Obi-Wan makes a small noise that could be agreement or disbelief, but he does not argue, and he does not turn back. “Onward then, I suppose.”

Onward they go until they reach a simple door slotted into the side of another long, winding corridor. This is the back entrance to the caves, rarely used, seldom guarded, and Chirrut breathes an inward sigh of relief that it has been left as such for this visit. He takes it as a sign that the Force wants him to show Obi-Wan the glittering, sparkling, seemingly never-ending caves with their pools and kyber shards and the softly glowing worms undulating across every surface. The Force always moves in mysterious ways, he knows, and it can be rude to question it too much. He does not miss the way that Obi-Wan arches an eyebrow at him as he pries the door open to reveal a set of precipitously small, sharply angled stairs descending into almost complete darkness.

“Not that I doubt your intentions, Chirrut, but this looks decidedly hazardous.” Before Chirrut can say anything to assuage the other’s concerns, Obi-Wan has pulled out his lightsaber and it flares to life, its brightness casting shadows across the walls and properly illuminating the stairs they will need to cautiously inch their way down to reach the kyber pools. Without even hesitating, Obi-Wan takes the lead despite the fact that he has no idea where he’s going, lightsaber held high in one hand while the other skims the rock wall next to them. Chirrut follows close enough that he could bury his face against the back of Obi-Wan’s robes if he wanted.

“There’s kyber in there, yes?” He nods at the lightsaber despite the fact that he knows Obi-Wan cannot see the gesture.

“Correct.”

“And that’s all you’ll tell me about it?”

That strange, small little puff of a laugh again. The sort that Chirrut imagines he would be able to hear much better if he could push Obi-Wan onto the ground and settle his head onto his chest. “It bested you. You know that bit as well.”

“It did not best me. There was no winner, remember? It was a draw.” There is no ire in his words despite the fact that the suggestion slightly rankles him. It is nice to hear Obi-Wan speaking lightly again instead of through some thick aggravation that he cannot or will not name.

“It would have. With more time.”

The walls around them have started to open as they descend, and the warm air from the bubbling pools brushes Chirrut’s face. This is the warmest place on Jedha when the sun goes down, which was one of the reasons the temple of the Whills was built over the kyber caves so that the rising warmth of the hot springs could filter up into the halls and the rooms above and warm them when the winds blew in off the desert. It does not always help very much in the tallest towers, but it is still better than many of the house in NiJedha. He can feel the crystals around them, swelling, growing, the singing that is more inside the air than on the air. It makes something in his chest thrum with it, and his ears ring a little. If Obi-Wan feels something similar he gives no indication.

“Well, you might not have had the time. Considering how old you are,” Chirrut teases back as they clear the last of the stairs, and Obi-Wan snaps the lightsaber off, pitching them into the softer light of the cavern.

The face that Obi-Wan flashes his way is both pained and incredulous, and Chirrut cannot stop himself from laughing at it. “You’re the one you called yourself old.”

He runs his fingers over his beard, which does not shimmer with red in the pale glow of the cave, and looks slightly perturbed. “I said I was too old for you not too old period. Is my Jedhan that bad?”

“No,” Chirrut singsongs and makes to dance away, to sprint into the center of the kyber caves the way that he always does, to shuck his clothing off and sink into the pools that he is familiar with, which are dark but shallow because the rains have not come yet. Nothing here is dangerous or unknown except his companion, and Chirrut doesn’t fear him, either. Except for the way he makes his heart speed up in bursts.

Obi-Wan’s fingers catch his wrist, wrapping around it for a moment before letting go, sheepish. “Sorry. Just. Don’t leave me alone here.”

The look on the older man’s face seems to be close to something like fear, which is perplexing because Chirrut didn’t think the Jedi were afraid of anything in the universe. “I won’t, but there’s nothing dangerous down here. The steps are the worst. By the time we leave, we should be able to take the main ones, though. Those are much better.” The discontent does not smooth away. “What’s wrong?”

The man scrubs fingers over the back of his neck and looks away as though ashamed of what he is going to admit. “It’s very loud here. The Force.” He clears his throat. “It’s just very loud. Is this what you hear? Is that what you hear all the time?” And that’s when Chirrut realizes that it’s less fear on his face and more pain. He had never considered that might happen, either.

“It’s different for everyone. I hear a low singing here. The kyber. The worms. It’s like the Force just resonates in them and creates a song. The song of the universe. Not words or emotions so much as just being. That things exist and life and it just.” Chirrut presses his lips together, trying to find the right way to put it together, to let Obi-Wan know what he is trying to get across. “Say you ring a bell and then put your head near the metal after the initial sound moves away. It’s that residual sound, that thrumming. And it’s inside me and outside of me and everything. What it is like for you?”

Obi-Wan’s face is pale, and his eyes are wide. When he answers, it sends a chill down Chirrut’s spine. “Screaming.”

Chirrut has never known the Force to scream before, and he isn’t sure how to respond or how to make it better. After a few moments of standing there, wondering whether exposure will allow the sensation to mellow, he decides that it isn’t worth it. The kyber worms and the twinkling lights and the glow of the kyber crystals (the possibility of a chaste kiss, lips brushed over that beard to see whether it is soft or course) isn’t worth the haunted expression on Obi-Wan’s face, the way he looks like he has to be witness to something slowly dying in front of him. In the end, he takes the man’s hand in his own, trying to ignore the way he startles slightly as they make contact, and leads him away and up the main stairs, which are better lit. The higher they go, the more Obi-Wan’s face and breathing returns to normal. They are only one landing away from the doors when the Jedi pulls at his hand to get him to stop, and he turns to look at him.

“I’m sorry.” Obi-Wan’s voice is plaintive and sincere, his features having fallen back to his normal calm. “I know you very much wanted to share that with me, and I fear that I may have ruined it. I only seem to disappoint everyone here on Jedha. I should not have accepted the invitation, after all. It turns out that it was selfish of me.”

“It’s okay. It’s just a cave full of worms. Nothing else.”

The look on the other’s face makes it very clear that it is not just a cave full of worms, but he says nothing to this effect, and Chirrut does not give him the opportunity to do so, rushes further into talking instead.

“I didn’t think that it might not be a pleasant experience for people with keener senses than myself. So I should be the one apologizing.” He steps closer into Obi-Wan’s space, close enough that he could slip a hand into his sleeve and take one of those folded hands but doesn’t. “I am glad you came. If you had not, I wouldn’t have met you. I think that would have been a greater disappointment.”

“Perhaps.”

“The Force has a reason for everything.”

When Obi-Wan settles a hand, briefly, on his shoulder, Chirrut wishes he had touched him somewhere else, somewhere that would have been skin to skin instead of dulled by so many layers of similar looking fabric. “The more I learn about the Whills, the more I wish I could learn.”

“I could teach you.” It is sultry and suggestive, and he means every bit of it.

Obi-Wan, ever careful, ever the gentleman, ever the Jedi draws away. “I’m too old to learn a new path. And I’m needed on this one.”

Chirrut watches him, arms folded over his chest, as he ascends the staircase and then soundlessly opens the doors to the hall and disappears. He should follow him, make sure that the Jedi does not get lost in the sprawling corridors of the temple, ensure that he arrives safe and sound at the door to his room, but he cannot move yet. All he can do is stand there and replay everything that has happened in his mind, wonder where and when he went wrong, whether he should have attempted it at all. Worse than not being able to have the chance to steal the kiss is not having the chance to tell Obi-Wan about the dark vision the Force brought him, which he had been hoping the man might be able to help him discern the meaning behind. It lingers at the forefront of his brain, sending tendrils through his thoughts like ribbons blowing in the air before it flutters away into the recesses, forgotten now that he is no longer holding onto it with both hands. By the time Chirrut makes his way up the stairs and out the door, Obi-Wan is nowhere in sight, and he goes straight to his quarters and stares at the ceiling the entire night, trying to will the remaining days into passing quickly.

 

“They’re leaving soon, the Jedi,” Master Adair’s voice cuts into his thoughts as he sits at one of the tables in the corner of the archive. The master is just standing there, arms full of datapads that they are no doubt rearranging again because that is simply what they like to do best. Research and rearranging. Chirrut doesn’t understand, but if it makes the master happy he supposes there is nothing that can be said against it.

“Are they?” he asks even though he doesn’t feel like asking. The only thing occupying his brain is the look on Obi-Wan’s face, the quiet, simple, polite but still damning rejection as though he had never even considered the offer at all. Though he had. There were moments when Chirrut is sure he saw it flashing deep in those blue eyes.

“Yes. Early. I’m surprised your Jedi didn’t tell you.” Anyone else might think that Master Adair was baiting them, but Chirrut knows them better than that. They are just talking the way they always do.

He settles his head on his crossed arms and pretends not to care. “He’s been distracted by more important things than keeping me abreast of his schedule.” It’s not a lie. Obi-Wan has been busy with the council, but Chirrut has also been avoiding spending time alone with him. He collects him in the morning and eats dinner with him at night but leaves him to his own devices the rest of the time. Maybe this will reflect poorly on him in the eyes of the masters and guardians when Obi-Wan tells them, but he doesn’t care. Avoiding him is preferable to that quiet politeness of his that doesn’t allow for anyone to get closer to him. The Jedi, it seems, are just as he had expected even if it doesn’t show the way he had thought it would.

Master Adair makes a strange noise in their throat that Chirrut has heard before but isn’t sure how to take. It mostly seems to be a kind of rumination. “Has he told you what they’ve been talking about?”

Chirrut lifts his head to look at the master in surprise. “No. Don’t you know?” He knows that Master Adair is not in the council, but he would have expected the other masters to be made aware of the circumstances regardless of that fact.

“No. The elders thought it best to bring the circumstances to our attention once it was all said and done. No decision is being made without input from the other members of the temple, of course, but these talks are just preliminary exchanges of information and ideas.”

“Oh.” Chirrut isn’t completely sure what this means. “Does that mean the Jedi will come back?”

There is the huffing sound that Master Adair makes when they laugh and then the click of their feet as they turn and begin to walk away. “I doubt it. The Jedi avoid coming here often. We make them nervous, us with our talk of the Force.”

“Master?” Chirrut calls out at the slowly retreating form.

Master Adair looks over their shoulder, eyes opening and closing slowly in curiosity. “Yes, Imwe?”

He reconsiders asking for a moment but then swallows and finds the courage to barrel on. “What does it mean when the kyber screams?”

“The Force is different for everyone, of course, but that would seem to be an ill omen for anyone involved. No matter how loose your interpretation.” With that the dark green robes resume their shuffle back into the long aisles, disappearing from view, and Chirrut continues to think about Obi-Wan.

 

The Jedi are leaving the next day. It has been two weeks, and the Jedi are leaving. Nothing has changed between Chirrut and Obi-Wan since the trip to the kyber caves. Chirrut has been unable to give voice to everything he wants to say, the words all stoppered up inside his throat since the incident in the kyber caves, since Obi-Wan turned on his heel and walked away. They have continued to exist near other in silence, and if Chirrut has felt the Jedi’s eyes increasingly lingering on him, he has been careful not to react to it. But the Jedi are leaving in the morning, and Chirrut has spent the last several hours lying on his bed staring up at the ceiling and thinking, wondering if he will ever see any of them again, trying to figure out what the screaming of the kyber might have meant and reaching his hands out desperately for the tendrils of that vision only to find that they have vanished utterly. The only part that ever comes back to him is the glow of kyber in the darkness and a heartbeat in the air.

There is no time left for restitution, and he is trying to be okay with that, trying to make peace with letting what he thought was a budding friendship (perhaps with the opportunity for more) slip through his fingers. Obi-Wan will leave, go back to wherever the Jedi lie, slink away into the stars, never to think about him again, and Chirrut will try and do the same, forget about his blue eyes, and the mouth that needs to smile more and the overwhelming aura of protectiveness that seeps out of his every movement. A man with a deadly weapon at his side who picked a fighting form with an emphasis on defense. A man who fights to limit the risk of injury to those he would guard even when no one stands near him. It’s a strange sort of thing, Chirrut thinks, and he wonders why it seems so endearing instead of silly, this selflessness. It shouldn’t make sense, but it does when it comes to Obi-Wan. It just seems to fit the same way that Jedhan fits into his mouth despite the overly precise and calculated way that he forms the words.

Chirrut doesn’t really understand it. Perhaps he never will.

He also doesn’t understand the quiet but hurried knocking at his door. It’s light and yet insistent, something that doesn’t want to be a bother but needs to be heard. None of the masters or guardians knock like that, and Chirrut thinks that it might be a bothersome initiate and considers ignoring it, pretending to be asleep, but something tells him to check. When he opens the door, he finds Obi-Wan on the other side, looking sheepish and slightly bewildered, as though he himself doesn’t know what he’s doing there. “Hello,” Chirrut says. “Did you need something?”

“No. Well.” The man folds his hands, unfolds, scrubs a hand over his face to toy with his beard. “I would like you to forgive me.”

Chirrut is quiet, waiting.

“I shouldn’t have walked away from you in the cave. I was rude. That was rude of me. I was overwhelmed by the screaming and the sense of everything. It’s very close in your kyber caves. The Force is very close. I was not prepared to listen. It was too much. I couldn't properly hear.” He frowns, slight creases gathering around the bright blue eyes, and his mouth looks soft and sad.

Chirrut tries not to think about what it would be like to kiss it, tries to stay mad or at least irritated at the events that unfolded in the caves. Tries and fails because the only thing that ticks through his mind, time and again, is the question of whether Obi-Wan feels as lonely as he does sometimes. “It’s fine. I forgive you. It’s okay.”

Obi-Wan seems to be very invested in his hands, folding them together and then unfolding, repeating the process, watching them as he does so, and Chirrut senses that there is something else. He’d be a fool not to notice it.

“Was there something else?” he asks because it doesn’t look like the Jedi is going to say anything unprompted. It’s possible that even prompted he might not say anything at all, and this is strange to Chirrut who says almost everything that pops into his mind even when he knows that it might just get him in trouble.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says again.

“You already said that.”

“Right, no. I was proactively apologizing.”

Chirrut is surprised when Obi-Wan steps into his space, hands gingerly cupping his cheeks, and the man’s skin is much softer than he ever would have guessed considering how good he was with the lightsaber during their duel. There is a moment of stricken panic evident in Obi-Wan’s eyes before something seems to click, some push forward, and he makes his decision. Then there are lips, soft, pleasant, but somewhat chapped from the dry air and the cold of Jedha pressed to his own, and Chirrut closes his eyes and steps further into it because oh. This was not anything he was expecting. It is chaste. No tongue. No real passion. Just skin against skin, warm and gentle, with Obi-Wan’s hands never wavering from where they caress his face. Chirrut settles his own hands at the man’s waist or where it would be under the three or four layers of cream and tan clothing that he swims in.

Before he can think of trying to deepen it, of seeing what happens if he runs a tongue across those lips to ask for access, Obi-Wan, blushing furiously, has pulled away, stepping far enough back that Chirrut’s hands fall in front of him. “That’s all I have to give you,” Obi-Wan says, and his voice seems slightly strained and still so apologetic.

For his part, Chirrut isn’t sure what to say. Thank you seems weird even if it would be honest because he is grateful for the kiss even if he wishes there was more to it, the opportunity for there to be more to it. Instead, he decides to try and soothe Obi-Wan’s feelings, which seem raw and near the surface and possibly more than a little hurt. “That’s fine. It’s enough. Don’t worry. It’s fine.” And if he touches his fingers to his lips as Obi-Wan moves away, wordlessly, slipping back into the darkness of the halls, he doesn’t realize it until the last of that glittering, reddish gold hair has faded from view.

 

The Jedi leave in the night before Chirrut has even risen from bed, and he wonders whether the apology was for the kiss or the new disappearing act. This thought weighs on him for weeks afterward, a strange sort of melancholy tinged with something else that feels like anger but isn’t. By the time he realizes that it is regret, it has washed away and the world around them has changed.


	3. The Guardian

Chirrut expects an announcement from the Whills regarding the reason behind the visit from the Jedi, but it never seems to come. The days tick by, one after the other, unfathomably slow in the absence of Obi-Wan’s smile even on the days when it was tight instead of soft, and Chirrut wonders how he could have grown accustomed to someone’s company after so short a time, but no word from the elders is given. The initiates, Chirrut included, are left in the dark, wondering, whispering to each other at every given opportunity. Some of them crowd him in the halls or in the training rooms, follow him to the archive, sit with him at meals and pester. They ask him questions about what the Jedi said, and Chirrut has to admit that the Jedi said nothing, gave no hint about the reason for their visit. The others are clearly disappointed and surprised that Chirrut, who always seem to get whatever he wants, was unable to tease the truth from the lips of the Jedi as well.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell them that he was more in pursuit of something other than the reason for the trip. He doesn’t have the courage to tell them he was distracted by the man in front of him rather than the reason for the man being there. He would like to talk to someone, anyone, about it, but the others prove, once again, that they are not his friends. As soon as they figure out that he has nothing to give, no stolen secrets to pass, they leave him alone, sinking into his thoughts, replaying the memory of lips pressed against his own.

It didn’t feel the way that he had hoped. That is the thought that often rises to the forefront of his mind. It didn’t feel the way he had hoped. There were no flames bursting through his stomach, no sparks of kyber in his blood, no rushing of water in his head. It was just lips on lips, soft but slightly dry. The lips of a man. And they were nice lips, it was a nice kiss, though so very chaste as if it was Obi-Wan’s first kiss, but it answered nothing for him. Chirrut wonders whether it was too chaste, too fleeting to know for sure. Love remains a mystery for him. Locked in a box somewhere, tied with a bow, waiting. A present no one has gifted him yet. Perhaps a present no will ever give him.

After two weeks with no word as to why the Jedi came and went, what they were locked in such a furious discussion with the Whills elders over, he asks Master Adair while they are cleaning the aisles of the archives. Chirrut has seen many expressions on the face of the master over the years they have known each other, but this one is new and he isn’t exactly sure how to read it. He does know, however, that he doesn’t like the slow way those eyes slit closed, the way they focus on him for a moment and then shift away again. The sign of liars, a guardian had told him once during training. Look into the eyes of your opponent. If they hold your gaze, they are true. You might not be on the same side, but they are still true to their cause. If they look away, if they will not meet your gaze and hold it, they are liars. They are cowards.

Chirrut does not want to think this about Master Adair, who has done so much for him, who has been the closest, best thing he has to a friend, but as their eyes flit away, he cannot help but think it. Liar. Coward. Tell me.

“We’re not supposed to discuss the particulars with the initiates.” Master Adair folds their hands apologetically. “It was decided that it would simply upset them. It’s for your own good. It’s likely nothing to worry about anyway.”

Chirrut hates things that are for his own good. It’s a phrase that he has heard too many times over the twenty years of his life, but it has been getting especially hard to endure for the last couple, especially considering how the temple elders have been denying him permission to take the trials he wants, to become a guardian as he wants. “Master Adair, I would not be an initiate now if they let me finish my path.” He tries to keep his voice calm, but he knows that it shakes. “This isn’t my choice. It’s theirs.”

They have discussed this before, many times. Master Adair is passive in all things. As long as nothing upsets their work in the archives, they are happy to stay out of the wider range of temple life. It’s a different sort of world than what Chirrut wants. As such, Master Adair has not always been the best person to talk to about it, simply because they don’t understand his rush, his hurry, his willingness to catapult straight into danger. Chirrut is expecting the master to once again tell him that all things happen in their own time, that he should not rush his path, that the Force will lead him where it needs to. He is steeling himself for these words so that he can control his reaction and not get angry at his friend. So the answer, when it comes, takes him aback. “Maybe you should ask them again.”

Something has changed. That is the only thing that races through Chirrut’s mind as Master Adair turns away from him, those words still heavy on the air. If Master Adair is suggesting action, if Master Adair is no longer preaching patience and waiting to see what the Force will bring, then something has changed and probably not for the better.

No matter how many times he shifts through the conversations he had with Obi-Wan during his stay, he cannot locate any clues that the man dropped. He was careful and purposefully silent on the reason for his trip but agitated. By his own order, though, not by the Whills. Chirrut wonders whether he would have agreed with this present course of action, this purposeful avoidance of providing information to the rest of the Whills. For their own good. It bothers him. It nags at him.

Before the end of the day, Chirrut ends up in front of the temple elders again, asking for permission to take the Guardian trials and pledge himself to the Whills in the way that he wants instead of sitting around and waiting while they take turns to try and change his mind.

“Has this been prompted by something the Jedi said to you, Initiate Imwe?” they ask, always careful, always suspicious, but there is something different now. Something changed about the Force around them, and their questions are not as harsh at the edges.

“No, masters. The Jedi said nothing about the meeting. Nothing to influence my path. This is the path I have been on since before I was old enough to recognize it.” He folds his hands in the sleeves of his robe, stealing the gesture from Obi-Wan, hoping it looks at least half as elegant on him as it did on the older man. “Though I am concerned about the reason for the council with the Jedi, and I would like to know what was discussed, what was so important to bring our lost cousins home to deliberate for so many days. If the Whills are in trouble, I would like to add my strength to defend them. The temple is my home. Jedha is my home. I am a good fighter. I would like to protect my home if you will let me.”

The silence feels as though it stretches out for seven years but is as tenuous as a strand of silk the kyber worms spin in their dark, humid home under the temple. There is the murmuring of voices as the masters talk to each other, low enough that not even Chirrut can understand them, and he wonders whether they have switched to some other form of Jedhan for the task. The Force around him flickers, wanes, seems to close in, and he thinks he sees, far off in the distance but moving closer, dark eyes and a flash of kyber that pulses like a drum or a heartbeat.

What is this thing that slouches toward him? And why is it taking so long?

The minutes feel like hours, but he stands and waits. Stands and waits and watches the elders as much as he keeps an eye on the thing in the Force, the thing that he does not recognize even though it feels familiar, feels like something he has always known and will know again even if he cannot put a finger on the why or how of it. Come closer, he thinks at it, and it withdraws. Come closer, I would like to see you. It remains just shuddering darkness.

“Chirrut Imwe,” the elders say at last, and he turns his attention back to them fully again. “It is decided. You have been granted permission for the Guardian trials.”

His heart is in his throat, and he is ready to pour out a million words of gratitude when the finger goes up to halt him.

“Once. You may only take the trial once. If you do not succeed, then you will be on the master path that we deem best suited for your abilities and the Whills.”

As far as Chirrut knows, no one has passed the Guardian trials on the first try in almost fifty cycles. It should be daunting. It should make him reconsider. He thinks of the thing in the Force. His gaze never wavers when he says, “Consider it done.” No one has passed the Guardian trials on the first try in almost fifty cycles, but he is Chirrut Imwe, and he gets what he wants.

The elders are not cruel or unfair. They do not insist that he take the trials right away or even the next week. No, they provide him with a timeline that allows ample time for both him and the temple to prepare for the trials. Most of the initiates do not become Guardians. It is an elite job, and one suited for only certain temperaments. The Guardians have the smallest ranks and are in the highest demand. They stretch themselves thin and do not complain. He has looked up to them since he was a boy. He has felt his destiny lie there, in those ranks, since he can remember.

As he lies in his bed on the night before the trial, he thinks about the thing in the Force. It hovers there constantly now, just out of reach, just out of sight. It looms, larger than most men, tall and broad like the mountains in the distance, in the sands beyond the mesa. Those dark eyes glitter, shine, in the shadows. But the thing that stands out the most is the kyber heartbeat. It is a heartbeat, Chirrut has decided. There is nothing else that it could be, though it is slower than he would expect, sluggish, as if dormant.

He remembers something one of the guardians told him as he drifts to sleep, as he smiles slightly at the thing in the dark, the strongest stars have hearts of kyber.

It is not easy; he did not expect it to be easy, but neither did he expect to be thrown to the floor less than twenty minutes in, panting, his sides already aching from the exertion. No, it is not easy to force himself to roll over and find his feet, to stand back up and face his opponent. Chirrut would very much like to bow out, to excuse himself for not being ready, to take more time to prepare, make himself worthy of the challenges that he faces and then beat them one by one effortlessly, the way that he has vaulted over so many hardships in his life. He would like to, but that is not the point of this trial.

And he only has one try. This is all or nothing. There are no other options. There is no other path. He will be a Guardian. Chirrut knows, even without asking, even without the benefit of being able to lock eyes with one of the guardians in the temple, that this is how it always goes. It doesn’t matter how many chances you have or how much time you’re given to prepare, this is the Guardian test. No matter how strong you are, they are stronger. No matter how fast you are, they are faster. No matter how clever or flexible, no matter how prepared, they will always be one step ahead.

It is like walking into the Force. You have to expect that you will be cowed and brought low. Part of the winning is the losing and making certain that you get up again.

So Chirrut gets up again, faces forward, and continues. No matter how many times he fails, he continues.

It is not easy, but he passes. Kneeling, hands braced on the floor, panting to find his breath, which has only rarely been stolen from him in duels, Chirrut passes. Even though he doesn’t think he will. Maybe that’s how it always goes. He would be prepared to keep fighting if they asked that of him. He would be prepared to keep fighting until he falls unconscious and just bodily cannot do it anymore.

Maybe that is what they’re looking for, that will to continue that never falters. He respects the guardians of the temple so much more now, understands why their ranks are so thin. If someone had told him about this ahead of time, he’s not sure that he would have been able to stay the course, might have bowed out, allowed the elders to dictate the path his feet are meant to walk on. It is good that this trial is done in secrecy, though he wonders whether it changes when further tries are allowed.

“Chirrut Imwe,” the voice repeats, and he looks up, up, up to where he thinks he can see the small box the elders sit in, high in the temple stadium. No one is in the circle other than him and the testers who have slid back to the sides. There is nothing under his feet or his fingers except the packed clay and the shifting sands of the ring. Despite the fact that there is no one watching to make a noise, he thinks he hears distant cheering, realizes that it must simply be ringing in his ears from a blow to the side of his head that he was unable to avoid, wonders how longer before that clears, if it will ever clear at all.

“Chirrut Imwe, rise.”

He wants to tell the voice no. Wants to tell it that he is quite fine where he is and will rest a while if they will allow him the opportunity, but he knows that is not how this works. So, panting, aching, stumbling, he rises. His body falters, but he does not fall down.

“You entered this ring an initiate of the Whills.” There are long, drawn out, dramatic pauses in the speech. It has been this way the entire trial, and Chirrut has gotten used to it, started to think of all of it as just some play that he is in like the performances they have on festival days. “You leave this ring as a guardian. Guardian Chirrut Imwe. Congratulations. May the Force of others be with you.”

The words ring through his head long after they have left the speaker’s mouth, and Chirrut draws them in, ties them in a bow to place them in his heart to linger there forever. He covers his face with his hands but does not cry, simply overcome, smiling too brightly for what he knows is considered a solemn and respectful moment, but all he wants to do is laugh and sing and turn cartwheels in the sand because he did it. When he takes his fingers from his face, he forces it into a respectful, mature look and bows. “Thank you, elders. I will hold my position with honor. I will perform my duties with care. I will make the Whills proud of me. May the Force of others be with you all.”

He stays bowed and thinks he can hear the elders file out of their box first and then there is the noise of the testers as they shift in the sand and leave the ring. He is supposed to wait until everyone else has exited before he moves. Guardians stand their ground. Guardians leave no one behind. They are the eyes and the ears of the temple. They are the first and last line of defense. They fall before the temple falls because the temple is built on them as much as it is built on the rocks and the sand and the kyber caves.

Now he is the temple. Now he is practically Jedha itself.

His legs and back are shaking with the effort of continued standing, of waiting, of bowing and holding for so long as he waits for the room to clear before he moves. It’s hard to know how many people are there, especially when all he can look at is the footprints in the sand, but the Force helps. Lights and shimmers and twinges around him as each person takes their leave. A hand he knows settles against the back of his head for a brief moment, and he holds his breath, stops himself from reacting as Master Adair says, “We have always been proud of you, young one,” and then slips out as well.

When they have finally all left him, he lets himself sink to the ground and closes his eyes. He will rest. He will just rest here until the ringing in his ears has subsided and the burning wash of pain has eased a bit. Just for a few hours and then he will return to his room and sleep until the morrow when the official announcement of his entrance into the Guardians will be made and he will receive his new robes and official weapon, be assigned to one of the others as their apprentice because he might be a guardian now but that does not mean he is ready to tear off on his own for new adventures or standing by the temple gates or teaching. The Guardians are quiet, secretive folk and most of their missions are never breathed to anyone except each other.

The Force moves around him, and in the dark behind his eyes, he watches as the thing that always lingers there comes closer, seems to regard him with its own gaze, black and wet like it is ever crying. And the kyber in its chest glows softer now as though in time with his shallow breaths--it hurts too much to take in all the air he would like, and Chirrut thinks that his ribs might be cracked or at least bruised. He still has no answers for what it is, why it feels familiar like something he has always known, like the close friends he’s never had.

“Are you proud of me too?” he asks the thing in the dark and watches it recede back into the shadows and the gloom of the Force that lingers behind his eyes.

Chirrut sighs and rolls onto his back wincing at the pressure but not perturbed enough to leave, not yet. “I would very much like to know what you are. Will you ever tell me?” He has asked many things of the Force during his life, which he knows that he is not supposed to do, but cannot quite help himself. He does not ask the way the Jedi do, does not attempt to make it do anything, does not use it for power or acclaim, but he talks to it, and he wants from it. And sometimes it shows him things, but never tells him how to interpret them. It has been with him forever, but Chirrut still feels so lost when trying to understand it. Much like life, he thinks. Much like love. Which he does not get still even after Obi-Wan pressed his lips to his own.

“All right then,” he sighs even as, little by little, bit by bit, sleep draws near and so does the thing that lingers in the Force just out of reach. “Try not to take too long, though. You have forever. I do not.” If it hears him, if it understands, it does not react, does not come closer, does not speak. It just lingers there with its kyber heartbeat, like it is the one guarding him, and Chirrut slips into unconsciousness, though free from the kinds of dreams that have haunted him before, the fire and the looming and the sense of something dangerous coming. He has no dreams at all, simply sleeps peacefully and for several hours before Master Adair comes to find him, shakes him gently awake and shoos him off to his room for a proper rest before the ceremony the next day. Chirrut goes wordlessly, too exhausted, for once, to make any of his usual fuss.

 

The ceremony that heralds the addition of a new Guardian into the Whills is long and arduous even for Chirrut who is normally at home in the middle of a festival. While his bruised and aching body is not pleased with all the sitting and standing and walking and kneeling, a seemingly never-ending demand for him to change position and greet this master or this guardian, people who he has never seen in his life before because they work outside of the temple itself, linger in strange places in and around NiJedha and only come back home when there is a need for it, he grits his teeth and he smiles, performing each and every moment that is required of him even when he feels exhausted or the twinge of his bruised ribs makes him grit his teeth. Chirrut is half convinced that this ceremony is actually the second part of the trial and that if he shows any weakness during it he will be deemed unfit and cast out of the ranks he has only so recently joined. He cannot have that. He has worked and wanted for too long to sit back and let it slip through his fingers now. So even though it pains him, even when his smiles are more grimaces than pleasure and he moves far slower than anyone around him is used to, slower than he himself is used to, he persists because faltering might mark him as being unworthy.

The main hall is brightly lit and full of food and noise. It is the press of bodies and the swirl of so many different colored robes, and Chirrut wears his new ones with pride, the dark blue and the black and the red. He tries not to think about the why behind the shades, how they could hide a great many things like dirt and clay and blood from wounds received protecting the temple, protecting the Whills. It does not change his decision, this realization, though it does make him look at some of the other colors with a little less reverence. The pale blues and the creams and the browns, light green, yellow bright as the sun during a summer afternoon, orange like the sunset, pink like the flowers unfurling in the garden. So many pastels that he and his dark brethren stand out among them like shadows. Which color is the better target, he wonders, but only for a moment because then someone is speaking to him and he has to give them his full attention.

Master Adair clips in for a short amount of time, hovers around the food, selecting various roasted insects, straying away from a lot of the other masters and guardians. When Chirrut approaches them, they smile but it does not seem to reach their eyes, and he wonders if they were hoping to keep him in the archive forever. On more than one occasion, Master Adair had remarked that Chirrut would be just as suited in green as anything else.

“Master Adair, thank you for coming. May the Force be with you,” Chirrut says, the familiar rote falling from his lips of its own accord at this point. He has said it so many times that the words have started to lose all meaning.

“We get these ceremonies so rarely. They always make a lavish feast. Not the same for any of the other disciplines so that’s a bright side to this, at least.”

Chirrut winces at the tone. “I apologize if you’re disappointed in my choice.”

When the eyes turn to finally look at him, they are soft with something that Chirrut isn’t sure he’s ever seen on Master Adair’s face before, and he doesn’t know exactly how to read it. “Disappointed isn’t the correct word, Guardian Imwe. Concerned is closer.” They click their nails together, a gesture that Chirrut has learned is a nervous habit. “I’m not sure that you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

While he appreciates the concern, Chirrut thinks the timing seems odd, wonders why Master Adair didn’t say anything before the trial itself if they were worried. There are many things that he could say, questions he could ask, pointed ones even about how this concern seems late all things considered, but he is tired. He is tried, and he hurts from the ordeal yesterday. He would very much like for all of this to be over and done with and for his Guardian training to be beginning because it’s not as if one simply passes the trail and then it’s over and done with. There is still so much for him to do, so many new things for him to learn, and it will be a long time coming before he is worth his salt in anything, before he actually feels like a Guardian and not simply a novice at yet something else. So, because he is tired, he reaches for platitudes. “All is as the Force wills it,” he says, and it slips out like the tired sigh that he had been hoping to keep at bay.

Now Master Adair’s eyes furrow slightly. “You know one of the privileges of being a Guardian is access to the locked section.” Then they nod, pocket another handful of something from the table and move away through the crowd, quickly disappearing through the doors before Chirrut can even attempt to stop them.

The locked section. He hadn’t even considered it, but of course, it is true. It is also one of the things that Chirrut has wanted access to since he was very young, since he first heard about it, actually. The idea of things being kept from him never sat well with him. Chirrut has always wanted what he’s been told he cannot have. And now can have them. Well, now he can have them after he endures what is likely at least five more hours of small talk and feasting and continuing to move around the room enduring whatever strange whims the ceremony commands him to do, such as kneeling in front of the eldest Guardian and reciting the first twenty Force mantras.

“Young Imwe,” a voice calls through the crowd, and Chirrut groans inaudibly before turning, smile spread back across his face.

“Yes, good Master.”

“Come here. Guardian Nabeam has voyaged through the sands to meet you. This is a rare gift. We only see Guardian Nabeam once every few cycles usually.”

On a typical day, Chirrut would love to know what Guardian Nabeam can tell him about the sands, what happens out there, spin stories of the pirates and the nomads, describe what the other kyber caves that litter Jedha’s surface are like. Today, though, his patience, a carefully crafted line, is thin and strained. All he wants to do is sleep and wonder at the Force, see if the thing with the kyber heartbeat will draw near him.

That is not for today. Now that he belongs to something bigger, he must bend his will to it. It will hurt. Change always hurts. But he asked for this so he will concede. The smile on his face is ragged, but he gives it even as he picks his way through the throngs. “Yes, Master. May the Force of others be with you, Guardian Nabeam.”

The man, rugged, clothed in a dirty and frayed version of Chirrut’s own new garb laughs and smiles and extends a hand. “May the Force of others also be with you, young Imwe.” His grip is warm and inviting, and he leans down to say into Chirrut’s ear, “No need for such formality among brothers, Imwe. Welcome to the family of the Guardians.”

It is warm, and it makes his chest swell with something he has only rarely felt before even though it is the sort of title he told Obi-Wan they did not heed. Maybe it is belonging. Or maybe it is the sting from the liquor that Nabeam hands him while smirking and clapping a hand on the Master’s shoulder near him. Whatever it is, it feels little less lonely than Chirrut has felt up to this point. The Masters, the Whills, can be stiff and formal, mindful of traditions and details. The Guardians, at least the far-flung ones like Nabeam, seem a different sort. More pleasant and cheery. Inviting and cordial instead of the cold competitiveness that Chirrut always read from his fellow initiates. Perhaps it comes from besting the challenges or perhaps it is just an innate quality needed for the position. Chirrut isn’t completely sure, but he likes the odds of having potentially discovered a place where he will not feel so lonely.

The entire temple is shocked when Chirrut confirms that he has accepted Nabeam’s invitation to novice in the wastes. It seems unheard of, unreal, that the temple’s pride and joy, one of the strongest Force sensitives they have had in their ranks for ages is opting to escape into the sands for his studies instead of picking from one of the many capable guardians who dwell inside the walls of the temple of the Whills. For their part, the other guardians say nothing, they simply nod at him, and Chirrut hopes they understand that this decision was not a knock on any of them or their abilities; it was more that he has never experienced anything beyond the city of NiJedha, never ventured off the mesa, never seen the statues in the sands or heard the way the other kyber caves sing. He is a child of the temple, and while he would not take that back for the entire universe, he would like to see what else is out there. Nabeam and his fellows are the best way to experience that that he knows.

 

The day before he is supposed to depart--Nabeam has been very gracious about waiting for him, allowing him the needed time to pack and put things in order and sit through what seems like several hundred meetings with the elders of the Whills to confirm with them that he has thought this through and he does know what he is doing and he will be back--Chirrut sets off to the archive to see Master Adair. They have not spoken since the celebration, and Chirrut tells himself that this is because he has been busy and not because he has been upset with the master for the way they spoke, the concern they showed at a moment that seemed far too late for it and, thus, colored in a strangely selfish way. Master Adair, he knows, has never been good soft words, though, and he supposes that it is possible they didn’t mean it the way he took it. Even if they did, he would not feel right leaving the temple without saying something to them.

The air in the archive feels strangely close, stale when he walks in, and he wonders whether the droids are working properly in their cleaning. Half the time when they stall out, Master Adair will leave them where they sit even if that is in the middle of aisles or tipped over on the ground. The master will eventually call someone when it gets to be enough of a distraction that they are forced to, but all in all, they are normally fine with just leaving the droids alone. As if they were nothing. Surely nowhere nearly as important as the books and the scrolls and the data pads. It reminds him, briefly, of the way he saw some of the Jedi interacting with their droids when they visited, how different that seemed, but thinking of the Jedi makes him think of Obi-Wan, which hurts in that strange keen way, so he stops, pushes it away, hurries down one aisle and the next looking for the green robe or the slight sound of nails on the floor.

He finds Master Adair in the reading nook they pointed him to when he was a boy, and the master is looking out the window. Their tongue flicks out as though to scent the air, and Chirrut knows they know he is there before he can announce himself. They probably knew he was there from the moment he opened the door.

“Master Adair,” he says in greeting, bows, waits. The red and the navy and the black robes are different than his initiate ones. They are newer, coarser, stiffer, and they hamper the way that he moves while he gets used to them. Chirrut doesn’t like it, but he will endure it because this is the path that he chose. This is the path that he fought for and nothing is getting him off of it now.

“Chirrut.” They are pointedly looking out the window, and Chirrut can see a book in their lap that looks like nothing he has noticed before. “I have heard that you are taking your leave of us presently.”

“Yes, master. Tomorrow morning I am leaving to be Guardian Nabeam’s novice.”

Master Adair runs their fingers down their face and finally looks up at him even as the lids of their eyes slot closed from the sides and then open again. It is a long blink, purposeful and somewhat appraising Chirrut thinks. “You will do well with Guardian Nabeam.”

This is not what he had been expecting to hear, and his shoulders straighten slightly. “You know Guardian Nabeam.”

“Everyone knows Guardian Nabeam. He is one of the best guardians the Whills has. You could have selected no better.”

Chirrut feels a warmth blossom in his chest at what seems to be Master Adair’s approval. “I am looking forward to learning everything I can from him, and then bringing it back to the temple so that I can properly serve the Whills.”

Master Adair only hums at this and taps their fingers on the cover of the book.

“I apologize for how I acted at the celebration when we spoke. I was tired. It was beneath me, and I treated you rudely, Master Adair.”

“Stop with that,” the master says, waving a hand in the air. “I could have said something before your trail, but I honestly didn’t expect you to best it in one go. Seeing as how one go was all you were allotted, I thought there was no reason for concern. But you are Chirrut Imwe. I should have known better. If anyone was going to get through the trial in one attempt, it was always going to be you. Forgive me for not voicing my thoughts earlier?”

Chirrut bows his head. “Always, master.”

There is a long beat of silence that falls. While it is comfortable, there is something slightly strange about it, in the way that the master continues to shuffle their feet and twitch their fingers on the book. Chirrut has spent hours with Master Adair in silence, side by side, working, and he knows that these are not their normal mannerisms. Finally, they speak. “I have one task more for you, Imwe. Will you do it for me?”

He looks up and into those eyes, unnerved to find something like fear in their depths. “Yes, master. Of course.”

“I need you to take this to the wastes,” Master Adair holds the book out to him but does not release it when Chirrut’s fingers fold around it. “Do not tell anyone you have it. Do not let anyone see it. This is important, Chirrut. Do you understand?”

“No, I do not understand. I will do what you say, master, but I do not understand.”

Master Adair makes the huff that means they are laughing as they release the book so that Chirrut can hurriedly tuck it into his sleeve. “Do you remember when we met? You asked me for certain information.”

It takes him a moment and then the memory is a flood. “The Force creation, yes.” Years and years ago. Practically completely forgotten about, wiped from Chirrut’s mind the way that so much from childhood dissolves like the strands of kyber silk when touched.

“I directed you to this corner, to these books.” They gesture at the shelves. “You found your story.”

Chirrut smiles slightly at the remembrance. “A fable. Nothing more.”

Master Adair taps Chirrut’s sleeve with one finger. “Something more. This is not a tale for children, though. It’s from your coveted locked section.”

“Master,” he starts and then stops, licks his lips, clears his throat, tries to put the words together before he speaks. “Is this book about Force creations? Are they real? Not just some parable put down to teach children lessons?”

“I have never seen one. I have never read a record of one. That book, however, contains the Force theory regarding them, and I would like to know that it is safe from those who may attempt to use it against us or for their own means.” Every word is solemn and so very sincere that it snakes a chill down Chirrut’s spine like plunging into ice water.

“I don’t understand.”

“You do not need to, youngling. Just consider this your first Guardianship role. Guard the book. For me. Bring it back when you have learned.”

Chirrut pushes the book further into his sleeve, trapping it firmly against his body. “May I read it?”

Master Adair laughs and shrugs. “If you can. It’s not written in middle Jedhan. It’s sand language. Perhaps Nabeam can teach you.” They stand then, stretching as if they have been sitting for quite a while, and Chirrut wonders how long they were sitting there, waiting for him, as if Adair knew he was coming. He wonders if the Force talks to Adair in similar ways that it talks to him sometimes, visions, portents, messages.

“Why me?” he asks their back as they start to slip back into the long aisles of the archive, fading into the shelves of knowledge like always.

The face that looks at him over their shoulder is fond. “I believe in you, Chirrut. You will do great things. I think that book was always meant for you in some way. We will have need of it, I fear, but not yet. Not now. The time is wrong. Close. But wrong. We’ll see how it feels when you return.”

“You don’t even know how long I’ll be gone. How can you know you won’t need it before then?”

Master Adair starts walking again, but their voice is pitched to carry in the way that only those who have spent their time in the archive know to speak. “I just know. You’ll be back by the time the temple has need of you. That is the way of the Force, and it sings strongly in you, Imwe. Neither of you will let us down.” The last words are so soft, but Chirrut catches them anyway. “Even if that fate might be a burden.”

With the book tucked into his sleeve and a heaviness behind his eyes, Chirrut takes his leave from the archive, hurries down the rows, past the slowly moving droids locked in endless tasks, and out of the door. It is not until his back is pressed to the stone walls of the hallway that he feels like he can breathe properly again. The book seems to burn into his skin, and he thinks he hears a faint heartbeat in his ears, in his mind. The thing in the dark with kyber at its core. Waiting.

“Is this what you wanted?” he asks aloud, pleading with the Force as well as with the thing with no name, no face, just those dark, dark eyes. There is, of course, no answer. He didn’t even hope for one. Not really.

 

Chirrut misses the temple as soon as he steps out in the broad expanse of the wastes, which is nothing but shifting sand under his feet and the whipping winds of Jedha that howl through the valley. It is so much louder here than it ever was on the mesa, in the halls of the temple. He thinks back to how it used to sound like screaming in the middle of the night when he was trying to sleep and knows now that he knew nothing about what the Jedhan wind could actually do. In the wastes, it is the entirety of everything. It is the moon itself. Screaming gusts on air and ground that will not stay still, always trying to trip you or trap you or send you scuttling into deep, dark holes that no one can escape.

Nabeam ties a rope around his waist and tells him to pretend that he is walking on threads of kyber worm silk, and it works. Chirrut has always been quick, agile, light on his feet, but now he feels like he is learning to fly, to walk on light itself, to tread between the grains of sand. Not every attempt is a triumph, though, and he ends up on his knees or face down in the dirt more often than he’d like. But Nabeam is there to haul up by the back of his robes and smile broadly, laugh heartily, and the fact that the man is loud makes sense now considering his usual climate, the struggle to be heard, and calls him little brother before continuing on their journey. The only way to cross the sands is on foot. No pack animal can bare the expanse and not even vehicles meant to traverse deserts can cross the one on Jedha because of the wind. It will be blown off course and into a mountain or into a ravine in moments.

Their moon is as deadly as it is life-giving. Their moon is the Force incarnate breathing in the darkness, full of beauty and dangers. Chirrut thrills at it all even as he worries about each step he takes, concerned that the next one will be the last one.

They camp in caves during the night when the temperature drops so quickly that it can freeze someone’s blood in moments. At least that is what Nabeam says as he tells Chirrut to go further and further into the dark places that are startlingly only because they do not sing with kyber the way that the caves Chirrut is familiar with always have. Nabeam sleeps little and speaks often, more than almost anyone else Chirrut has ever known, except himself.

“Temple born?” Nabeam asks during their fourth night of the journey. He is cooking a pungent smelling vegetable stew over the fire that he lit when Chirrut couldn’t his hands to stop shaking enough to be useful.

“Yes, guardian,” Chirrut says even though Nabeam has told him he can leave the formalities behind in the sand. Everyone is equal in the wastes, he said. “Is it that obvious?”

Nabeam’s laugh echoes through the cave, loud as a thunderclap. “No, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s true that you don’t know much about surviving the wastes but that could be said of the majority of the city born as well. You were just so eager to accept my offer. Temple born come in two types. The ones who never leave and the ones who are so eager to do so that they accept inferior positions.”

Chirrut frowns. “Inferior positions?”

“Perhaps no one told you, but the waste caves are not considered an honored task. Most of us chafed at the formalities of temple life. Or we were seen as disciplinary problems. A few of us are of the wastes and this was a way to get closer to home.” He points an appraising finger at Chirrut across the pot as he stirs the stew. “None of us, however, think that we’re anywhere near the highest echelon of Guardians. We’re not vying for the title of most devoted, that’s for sure. Did you know that?”

“No,” he stretches the word out without really meaning to and then worries that it makes him sound like he is second-guessing his decision. “But I still think it’s important. Even if you and the others don’t. I wanted to know the other caves.” He’s flailing to put right something that Nabeam hasn’t even really given him an indication was wrong. “Master Adair said I would do well with you. That’s high praise. If you know Master Adair.”

Nabeam’s face has changed. In the short time that Chirrut has known the man, he has never seen him look wistful, never seen him look anything but boisterous but there it is. Wistful. With maybe a flicker of fond. “I know Master Adair,” he says after a long moment. “We were once quite close. I will endeavor not to disappoint them in our part of your training.”

Part of him wants to ask for details about how and why Nabeam knows Master Adair, but Chirrut thinks better of it. Some things are not for you, the master had told him once, and while it had been about the locked section at that point in time, he thinks it could apply to this situation as well. “Master Adair said you might be able to teach me the sand language.”

“I should hope so. I’m the one who taught Master Adair.” He puffs his chest out with a little pride but then laughs, shaking his head. “Why would you want to know that? It’s not commonly used much anymore. Especially not in NiJedha or the temple.”

Chirrut hesitates, unsure whether he is allowed to tell Nabeam about the book that is still securely tucked into the pocket in his sleeve. He checks for it at least a hundred times a day even though its weight is ever present. “There’s a manuscript that Master Adair suggested I read, but they haven’t had the time to teach me the sand language and,” he falters in his rambling. It hangs on uneasy ground, somewhere between the truth and a lie.

“And the droids don’t do a good job of translating sand language, I know. They’re useful, but they have their limits. Especially in the temple.” Nabeam starts to dish the stew out into bowls, and Chirrut breaths easier when his eyes are no longer focused on him. “I can teach you to read sand language once we’re at the Guardian camp. Those kinds of supplies aren’t anything I keep on me.”

When Chirrut accepts the offered bowl of stew, he bows his head slightly and murmurs a prayer to the Force. Nadeam says no words, gives no thanks, just starts eating. “Are you temple born?”

The man shakes his head, and his long hair sways like grass. “No. City born. Of NiJedha. Rook clan. Though that won’t mean anything to you. Our family language is close to sand language. It’s part of the reason why it was so easy for me to pick it up.”

“Do you still have people in the city?”

The smile that Nabeam turns his way is bright and real, full of teeth. Few people in the temple smile like that. “I do. It’s why I became a guardian. I wanted to protect my kin. I wanted to protect my city. And now I’m here in the wastes because I’m too surly for temple life. But I like it out here. And we’re still protecting what’s important. Even if it doesn’t seem as glamorous to most people.”

“That seems very altruistic.” Chirrut moves the spoon around in his bowl but does not find himself to be as hungry as he was when they sat down.

“I suppose,” Nabeam answers with a shrug. “The adventure helped. And the challenges. Not everyone can be a guardian.” He levels his own spoon at Chirrut across the fire. “You’re well aware of that. I heard talk that all the disciplines were clamoring for you, but you wanted to join the war brothers.”

“War brothers?” He has never heard the guardians called that before.

“Sorry. Forgive me. War kin is a better descriptor for our ranks. For example, you’ll meet SoSo when we make camp, and she hates when I deem her a war brother. Or sister. Or kin. SoSo is a disagreeable sort. Much like Master Adair. I imagine the two of you will get along fine.”

“No, I. I don’t understand. War kin,” he repeats, putting the emphasis on the first word this time.

The smile on Nabeam’s face falters a little again, grows softer, sadder. “Just a bit of dark humor really, Imwe, but we are the first line of defense and there is a war coming. We’ve not had one in many years. Since before you were born. I’m sure you’ve heard tell of the temple Guardians keeping peace in NiJedha but those skirmishes are nothing compared to an actual war.”

Chirrut is beginning to wonder whether he wandered into a different reality than the one he has always known, the safe harbor inside the walls of the temple, in the kyber cave full of glittering worms and in the hushed twists of the archive. No one has mentioned war. “I’m afraid I still don’t quite follow.”

“Didn’t the Jedi come?”

“Yes.”

Nabeam looks into his stew as though looking for answers to something, as though he can see the future in the chunks of vegetables and thick gravy. “There’s always a war on when the Jedi come. It’s the only time they really see us.”

The silence is thicker than the stew.

“Didn’t you get to shepherd one of them?”

Chirrut swallows and makes an effort to eat because he knows it is going to be another long day of picking his way through the sand tomorrow, and he cannot manage that if he does not fuel his body at every opportunity. “Yes,” he finally answers.

“Hmph. I’m surprised they didn’t say anything. All the Jedi I’ve never met tend to be rather loquacious. Order this, order that. Lightsaber this, Force that. What is the Whills doing? How are you interpreting this passage? No, that’s clearly wrong. All of you will be doomed if you allow yourselves the distraction of affection. Blah blah blah. It’s strange to meet a quiet one. But yours was quiet?”

“He was. He was quiet and very polite. And he spoke Jedhan.” Chirrut does not think this is too much to give away. Obi-Wan, after all, hadn’t told him any secrets, wouldn’t mention anything that was happening in the meetings to him because he wasn’t allowed to. He wonders what Obi-Wan would tell him now that he is a Guardian, whether it would make any difference at all.

Nabeam looks pleasantly surprised. “Jedhan? Really? You either met the best or the worst of the lot, I’d imagine. Maybe a little bit of both.”

“Perhaps.” The remarks make him think back on something that Obi-Wan had said about being a disappointment to the order. But Chirrut thinks the best of the lot is probably a better descriptor for the Jedi with his blue eyes and soft lips and fluff of ruddy hair.

Before he can protest, Nabeam is refilling both their bowls with more of the hearty stew and changing the topic of conversation. “How is Master Adair these days?”

“Fine, I suppose. We mostly only talked about books or trouble I had gotten into.” Chirrut moves his spoon around his bowl for a moment and then eats a little more, mechanically. “They seemed to be disappointed in the path that I chose. Yet they didn’t think to say anything to me until after the trial. I think.” He sighs, unsure whether he should continue, but Nabeam is sequestered in the desert, and he doubts that anything he says will ever make it back to the temple unless he carries it there himself. “I think they wanted me to join them as an archive master.”

“That sounds like Adair.” When Nabeam chuckles, Chirrut looks at him. “Do you know what the archive trial is like, brother Imwe?”

“No.”

“You have to locate knowledge.”

“I’m sorry?”

Grinning, Nabeam points the spoon at him again. “Exactly. It sounds preposterous. And insane. But Adair told me about it back when they first entered the discipline. You locate knowledge. The masters ask you for a text on this or that subject, and they expect you to bring it to them. To know precisely where it is and to bring them the most relevant discourse on it. So if they ask for Force theory on mindlinks, for example, there might be two books on that, five scrolls, ten data pads. But they’re only looking for one thing so the person in the trail has to know that, needs to be cognizant of all the available data and able to discern which piece is the best, bring that to them and then explain their reasoning.” He takes another bite of the stew, shaking his head slowly. “It sounds much harder to me than the Guardian trials, but no one would ever know from the outset. And how many people do you think want to be an archive master?”

“Not many, I’d guess,” Chirrut says, voice small because he is thinking of the many, many times he and Master Adair had completely rearranged the archive on what seemed like little more than a lark. And he is remembering all the books and scrolls that were forced into his hands on those nights when his peers were training together or just goofing off but had excluded him like usual. All those moments when Master Adair went out of their way in order to make sure that Chirrut knew all the possible answers and forced him to explain why he chose a particular one. Preparation.

“Exactly. Not many at all. Only the best of us can be an archive master, brother Imwe. And only a few of those ever even realize they are worthy.”

They fall back into a comfortable silence, fire popping, as they finish their stew. Outside the winds of Jedha roar past the door of the cave, but they are tucked far enough into the rock that it does not reach them. They are as warm as they will be. As safe as they can be in the circumstances. And Chirrut can feel the twisting strands of the Force surrounding him.

“How secure is the archive?” he asks after a few moments.

Nabeam shrugs as he mixes sand and cleaning solution from his bag together and uses it to remove any stew residue from the bowl. “Not sure. I was not a temple guardian for very long. I barely got out of my novice hood before I was headed to the wastes.”

“If a war was coming, if the Jedi came to talk about a war, would Master Adair have been involved in it?”

“Chirrut, I don’t know. The particulars of the temple are lost to me. The hierarchy is confusing at best when you’re there every day. I visit rarely. And information does not reach the wastes quickly. Master Adair would have been told, though, surely, even if they were not on the council itself.” Concern and confuse mix together on his face, and Chirrut wonders whether this is a topic that would have been better avoided. “Why do you ask?”

Chirrut shrugs and begins cleaning out his own bowl using the leftover sand mixture handed to him. “Master Adair seemed more worried about the archive than usual when I left.” It is close enough to the truth that it only burns a little bit to say.

“Knowledge has been paramount in Adair’s mind.” There is something like bitterness there, but it is not Chirrut’s to chase. “Don’t worry, though. There are guardians whose sole duty it is to protect the archive in the event of an attack. If an attack even gets that far into the temple. Which it wouldn’t. The archive and Master Adair are safe. It’s just their nature to worry over things.” Nabeam sighs and fills the pot with sand and a few more dashes of the cleaning solution but leaves it near the fire to work overnight.

“Best to sleep now while we’re warm. The chill will creep in through the night and then it gets harder. Bundle up. Rest easy,” Nabeam says as he slithers into his Tauntaun lined sleeping roll.

It takes a little longer for Chirrut to rise and slip into his own. Even then he stares at the flickering fire for at least thirty minutes, trying to figure out whether or not something dances in the flames and sorting through all the information that Nabeam has given to him in such a short amount of time. The idea of war somewhere out in the wide space around them, the Jedi bringing news of this to their door, maybe asking them to fight. Adair’s concern about the book tucked into Chirrut’s sleeve. It spins and roils in his mind, hard to push away, difficult to drown out. Until there is a steadier noise all around him, through him, a familiar, regular pulsing. A heartbeat.

“So you’re here with me, too,” he whispers to the darkness. “And still silent.”

The light thump thump continues, lulls him to sleep, and Chirrut does not dream of any of the disconcerting information that has been given to him this night. No, he dreams of twinkling lights on the water in the kyber caves under the temple. He dreams of something large and warm that presses against his back. It hums in a voice he has never heard before, and the noise is thick like a blanket around him, keeps him warm, keeps him safe.

 

The journey through the wastes is easier and harder than Chirrut had assumed it would be. It is long and arduous, the constantly shifting sand a menace during the day and the perpetually howling wind that heralds the cold everywhere a menace during the night, but there is still something peaceful about it, almost otherworldly. They walk up and down dunes, exploring the hills and valleys of the desert, and Nabeam’s voice is the only actual sound to be heard. It is something like striking out on one’s own to discover something completely new and foreign, Chirrut thinks.

Nabeam will happily point out sickly skeleton trees and cacti that nestle in the desert and tell Chirrut all about them. Not just the particulars but the legends associated with them. The more the man talks, the more Chirrut wonders if he would know about Force creations just from existing, debates if it would just be a good idea to hand the book in his sleeve over to him, relinquish the responsibility and be done with it. He is a guardian, yes, but he is just a novice, and the weight seems to get heavier the longer he carries it. At night he can feel it pressing down on him like an omen, like those eyes and that heartbeat that follow him no matter where he goes, even here, even now in the wastes.

Chirrut, used to being the person with everything to say, finds that he has taken on the role of the listener instead, allowing the waves of Nabeam’s words to roll over him, fighting not to get drowned under them, just floating along on the current wherever it will take him. Nabeam tells him about the statues and the caves and the nomads who dwell in the desert, though they never come across any sign of the sand tribes, which makes Chirrut wonder whether they are still there at all. But Nabeam never mentions the dangers of the wastes that they spoke about in the temple, the bandits and the sucking sand and the worms that crawl, feasting, under their feet to create holes that could swallow all of NiJedha. There is never a word out of his mouth that Chirrut fears since that night when he mentioned war on the horizon, that the Jedi always bring war with them in some way or another. Chirrut isn’t sure whether he does this on purpose, having gathered how unsettled he made him, or if it is simply who Nabeam is, always laughing, always smiling, always with a pleasant tale on his lips. He enjoys it so much that he discovers he dare not ask, unsure whether he wants to find out the truth of things.

By the time they reach the camp, Chirrut isn’t sure what he expects of it, who he thinks will be living there. There is a very wide cave opening with several little, bent buildings erected outside of it and a handful of the skeleton trees, though these look marginally better than any others he has viewed thus far almost as if someone takes the time to tend to them, to try and help them prosper as much as anything can manage to in these conditions. There is a wisp of smoke from a small, contained fire, and the sound of people talking though they are too far away for him to catch words. It is just the murmuring. It is just the feeling, the swell in the Force that always accompanies people. Chirrut has found that the Force in the natural world feels different, even in animals, more subdued. The river of the Force does not need to fight to be felt there. Animals and plants and rocks just know it. They do not need to be swayed to figure out the truth. People, though, people have always been slower when it comes to things like that.

Nabeam whistles, high and clear, loud enough that Chirrut covers his ears and winces away from the other man slightly. Catching sight of the motion, the man places a hand on his shoulder and offers a soft, “Apologies for not warning you. It is a habit, and I forgot that I was bringing company.”

Chirrut wonders, idly, whether any of his fellows were aware that Nabeam was bringing company. He already knows that it is difficult to transmit information across Jedha. Something about the sands and the wind and the kyber that resonates through the moon jams most electronic transmissions. NiJedha was built where it was for several reasons: because the Whills were there, because the kyber was there, because the mesa helped to cushion the wind, and because the slight height meant that most transmissions could be more or less properly broadcast. But the wastes? They’re another matter entirely.

“Nabeam!” a voice peals out as a figure exits one of the shelters and begins to hurry toward them.

It is a woman with skin darker than Chirrut or Nabeam’s, and she is tall, dressed in Guardian robes that are equally as tattered and old as the man who has led him here. This, Chirrut thinks, must be SoSo. Her hair is long and intricately braided and there are markings on her face, though Chirrut is unsure whether they are birthmarks or status tattoos until she draws nearer. It is easy to recognize status tattoos but fewer guardians opt for them every passing year it seems. The woman is marked with many across her face and her hands, trailing under her sleeves. Chirrut doesn’t know all their meanings, and he thinks it would be impolite to ask, especially on their first meeting.

“SoSo,” Nabeam greets smiling brightly as though he does not see the way the woman’s lips lean just a little too far to the right to be encouraging. “I have brought us a novice. This is the newly appointed Guardian Imwe.”

Chirrut bows. “Guardian SoSo.”

“Rook.” Her voice is flat and several degrees colder than anything he has heard from Nabeam’s mouth. She sounds more like the temple.

Looking up, startled, he blinks because he knows that name. Nabeam said that name. His clan.

As though understanding, she sighs and gestures at Nabeam and then herself. “The Guardians Rook. He didn’t tell you? He never does.”

“I. I apologize. At the temple they called him Guardian Nabeam. I just assumed.”

SoSo is grinning now, though it is less inviting than Nabeam’s, slightly mocking but not in a mean way. “It makes some of them uncomfortable even though there are no rules about it. We aren’t the Jedi order, which they’re so quick to point out when criticizing our cousins but seem to forget in the face of everything else. They like to say that they find it confusing to have two guardians called Rook.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s exhausting, and ridiculous considering they take in siblings all the time. Going by our given names has simply become easier than fighting them.”

Chirrut eyes the tattoos again, wonders at the stories they tell. “Is that why you came to the wastes?”

“One reason, yes. It’s definitely easier.” She looks at him for a long moment, appraising, and Chirrut straightens slightly, hopes not to be found wanting. It is clear that this is her camp, she is the senior Guardian and not Nabeam as he had assumed. “Why did you want to come to the wastes, Imwe?”

“Adair suggested he would do well here,” Nabeam offers as though there is no procedure for any of this, no protocol, no rules of engagement to follow, and Chirrut can understand why the temple never quite suited him.

SoSo sighs like this is the weight of a mountain placed on her shoulders but there is something underneath it that is fond and no heat in her words when they come. “He’s a maverick, then? Forgive me for saying so, but speak for yourself, Imwe. You’re a guardian, not an initiate. It’s expected of you to fight your own battles even as a novice.”

“I have never been out of the temple before. I thought it would be good to see a little more of Jedha, to get away from my comfort zone.” But not further than the moon itself. Ah, no, not to leave Jedha. Chirrut doesn’t think he could ever leave Jedha, not while the Force sings so sweetly everywhere that is here.

“That doesn’t sound completely thought out, but you’re young. Better judgment will come in time and with experience. There is no place better than the wastes for experience so you’re not wrong to come, just shortsighted perhaps.” She wipes sand from her face and then tucks both hands into her sleeves. “You were one of Adair’s pupils? I’m surprised they let you come. Adair can be greedy with things that they like. Of course, they can also be distant. I have respect for Master Adair, but I don’t think they always make the best decisions. Of course, sometimes I have gained from their mistakes. It is what it is, though. Come, meet the others.”

Chirrut blinks at her retreating back, the loops and whorls still running through his head because that was so much said as if it was nothing at all. Nabeam claps a hand on his back, startlingly him back to reality, making him look up into the other man’s face. “Don’t let her shake you up too much. It’s something of a sport for her. She’s harmless really.” Then he laughs. “Well, as harmless as any Guardian of the Whills can be, I suppose.”

“What are the stories?” Chirrut passes a hand across his arm to emulate the trailing tattoos.

That makes Nabeam’s smile falter for a moment before it picks itself back up. “Not all good. But they’re hers so you’ll have to see if she will tell you.”

“But aren’t you?” Married is the word he lets hang in the air, unsure whether he should say it, whether it’s even a decent argument.

“Yes. But they’re still her stories, Chirrut. It’s still her choice even if I know all of them. Even if I’m in parts of them. And I won’t dishonor her just to sate your curiosity.” Hand still warm on Chirrut’s back, he gives him a bit of a push, prompting him forward to follow in SoSo’s footprints. “Now you had better follow her before she loses her patience. Technically, you’re her novice. I just fetch things home.”

Baffled and stunned and desperate for more information, Chirrut stumbles forward, after the intricate braids and the disappearing folds of cloth, into the mouth of the cave. SoSo is there, standing just beyond view from the outside, waiting for him, her arms crossed over her chest, her head turned slightly down as though she is focused on something else, but Chirrut can tell she is waiting for him. It’s in the way her head quirks slightly to the side when he enters, feet scrabbling a little on the loose rock on the cave floor.

“It’s rare that we get a novice here,” she says, and there’s something in her accent that Chirrut doesn’t recognize. Her Jedhan is loose and free flowing but there’s a suggestion of something underneath it, and he wonders if it is sand language or something else, another one of the family tongues that linger in NiJedha and across the rest of the moon or even something from another planet altogether. “Most people have no interest in the wastes. They either want to stay at the temple and be among things that are known or they want to escape Jedha entirely.” She makes a motion with her hand, soaring it into the air, and Chirrut thinks of Myek and her pilot training. “Go somewhere else altogether. To another planet or just space. Some people don’t want grounding. They just want to be disconnected.”

“But the Force,” he starts until SoSo waves her hand in the air again to quiet him, sharp, and Chirrut thinks that there is a language there as well. He has heard about sign, but does not know that he has ever seen it.

“Yes, yes,” SoSo continues when it is obvious that Chirrut is listening. “The Force connects us all. The Force is in everything. The Force is a river throughout the universe on which we are all adrift. But Chirrut. Some people don’t like water. Some people don’t want to be connected. Even if they know about it. Even if they might have once believed in it. And those people will wander and stray and try to get away. Or maybe they need some quiet. You and I both know the Force can be loud, especially here on Jedha where the Whills linger and the kyber sings its songs. The least inhabited parts of our moon are louder than the busiest marketplaces on the surfaces of planets with no kyber at their core.”

“Are you Force-sensitive as well?”

SoSo sighs and starts off down one of the paths that divert from the mouth of the cave, and Chirrut follows instinctively. “We are all Force-sensitive. Some of us are better at it because the Force is near to us. Some of us are good at it because we train very hard every day. Some of us are profoundly bad at it because we are born with it far from us and do no work. Even if it comes naturally, you can be bested by those who put in the work if you yourself are not interested in doing so.” She turns to look at him, and her gaze is sharper than half the weapons Chirrut has ever lifted. “I don’t care who you are or what you managed in the temple, Imwe. Everyone can be bested. You have to work at and for everything you want, everything you do. If you’re lazy, you leave. I don’t abide laziness here. There are too few of us and too much waste around us. Will that work for you?”

“Yes, Guardian Rook.” It crosses his mind, only once and briefly, that this might be easier if Nabeam were in the one in charge, but then he shrugs it off. Chirrut Imwe has never retreated from a challenge, and that is precisely what is currently being thrown down in front of him.

“Good,” SoSo says, folding her hands into her sleeves and then turning on her heel to continue down the path without even a glance over her shoulder to see whether or not Chirrut follows.

To his credit, he’s not quite convinced that he is supposed to follow, but he wants to know where the path goes. This is the path he has been fighting to stand on, and he wants to know that it was worth it. “Are we going to meet the others?” he asks after they have been walking in silence for about five minutes.

SoSo hums lightly under her breath and then shrugs. “No. You’ll meet them later. We’re going to meet the kyber. That’s much more important. If it doesn’t like you, you’ll have to go back even if you want to stay. It’s just the way it works. Nothing I can do about it. Rules of the wastes. Pretty much the only one we have. Not like the stuffy temple with all their rules. Did you get tired of those?”

Chirrut blinks and hurries to catch up, to fall into step with SoSo whose legs are longer than his own and who walks almost as briskly as if she were running. He thinks that he would like to spar with her and see which one of them is faster. “Some of the rules were tedious, but they were in place for good reasons. Even if I was not privy to all of those reasons.”

He is not expecting for her laugh to sound like the ring of a bell and echo around them for long seconds after she has stopped. “I can see why Nabeam liked you enough to let you come along.”

“Guardian Rook?”

“Yes, Imwe?”

“Is this where all the talkative members of the Whills go?”

SoSo laughs again and stops before a turn in the path to look at him. “Sometimes I think quiet people say more than those of us who can’t stop our mouths from moving. Think on that. That’s one of your lessons for today.”

“What’s my other lesson?”

And then he hears it, the singing. In the caves under the temple, the kyber murmured, whispered, was sweet and tame, domesticated by living with the Whills for so long that Chirrut isn’t sure that the crystals could remember a time without their guardians. Here, in the wastes, in the cavern, the noise is louder, the pitch and the song clearer, more vibrant. There are so many voices twined together. It is a chorus. It is a symphony of sound, and it is everywhere like the fabled floods that occur in the valleys when there is too much rain. One moment it is rising around him, a crescendo, and the next it is crashing over his shoulders, pulling him down into it, overwhelming.

Except for a grounding note, a voice that is not a voice but that he hears and has heard many times in the past. It rumbles in the same cadence as that heartbeat in the dark, and he focuses on it, wraps his fingers around it, feels it reach through the Force for him, almost as if to say, “I have you. I have you.” Eyes in the darkness. Kyber heartbeat. Worn and warm presence. I have always known you, haven’t I, Chirrut would ask if he could piece words together but they are beyond him now. All he knows is the rushing sensation of the Force around him, the kyber song bright and indifferent to the fact that he is being oppressed by it, and that heartbeat close to his ears, holding him steady.

“Imwe.”

He thinks, for a moment, that is it the thing in the Force, finally deciding to speak.

“Imwe.”

Until he recognizes SoSo’s voice, a hand on his shoulder, sharp rock in his back.

“Are you alright?”

Chirrut looks up at a face marked with tattoos and concern in eyes that are dark but not the ones he has been dreaming about for so long. Once again, he thinks, you have eluded me. “That was a lot.”

“I probably should have warned you, but life doesn’t warn us about things so it wouldn’t have been fair.” Then she grimaces, looking slightly guilty. “Still. I didn’t quite expect that. You sunk like a bag full of rocks. Too loud?”

“At the temple, the crystals sing much more gently.”

“Yeah, they’re more docile. These are wild. They like to put on a show. Divas. Did they say anything you could catch?”

Chirrut does not try to move much other than to slowly inch his head one way and then back the other. He decides not to mention the thing in the Force. It is not of these crystals. It shouldn’t make any difference. “Nothing I could make out. Sorry.”

SoSo folds herself onto the ground near him but not so close that she is touching him. “That’s fine. They seem to like you at any rate. As I said, they’re wild. We don’t tame this kyber; it tames us.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s hard to explain.” She pauses for a moment and then sighs before starting again. “The Jedi have their kyber trial, yes? We have something similar here. The cave, the kyber, it will call to you when you’re ready, it will lead you into the depths, and it will bring you to what you need. Often that’s a crystal for a weapon. Sometimes it’s just a deeper understanding of something.”

His head hurts. His head hurts, and his body aches from the ground and the landing. And this is a lot to try and process. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“That’s okay.”

Chirrut’s eyes are closing. He is too tired to force himself to stay awake.

“You’ll figure it out when it’s your time. For now, you should rest.”

“Here?” It seems like a ludicrous suggestion.

SoSo is already climbing to her feet, stalking away down the trail. “Here is as good a place as any. Nothing will hurt you here, Imwe. Your biggest concern is in your own head, in your own heart, and that is an adversary you can never outrun.”

It will be fine, he thinks. It will be fine. He is a guardian, and his fellows will never let anything bad happen to him. That is one of the tenants of the Whills. Chirrut repeats snatches of mantras to himself as he drifts to sleep, thinks he hears, from the Force, from the heartbeat, “I will never let anything bad happen to you,” but shrugs it off as exhaustion, as a trick of the reverberation of kyber song still ringing in his ears.

 

Training with the Guardians of the waste is not as difficult as he had imagined it might be. Most of it is done with SoSo or Nabeam, though Chirrut occasionally interacts with the others in their party, a small older man named Treme who comes and goes as he pleases and a female Twi'lek who tells him to call her Kai and does not even bat an eyelash at the fact that they both know the name she gives him is probably a lie. There is another man who skulks at the edges of their camp in his Guardian robes, but he never speaks when Chirrut is near or even seems to look at him. When asked about his presence, neither SoSo nor Nabeam will answer in any way that is not simply a collection of riddles.

“People need different things from the wastes,” Nabeam says in his lilting voice, all smiles, and SoSo will simply shrug and remind him that he is here for a personal journey, not to save anyone else.

Chirrut wants to protest because he is here to learn to be a good Guardian of the Whills. One of their oaths is to protect their fellows, and he finds it difficult to protect this group of people. Because they won’t let him. They won’t even let him close enough to figure out what color their eyes are. Sometimes, at night, when he hears the pitching, swarming song of the wild kyber everywhere, vibrating in his bones so hard that he fears his body will shake apart, Chirrut wonders whether the others are actually Guardians at all or whether they are simply nomads taken in by the Guardians Rook. He supposes that there is no way to know for sure, and then he thinks that it doesn’t matter so much.

Kai is always willing to spar with him, and she is quicker on her feet than almost anyone he has ever known. Treme tells him stories of the Jedi he met when he was young and far away from Jedha. The man speaks of being a page in their order, and Chirrut isn’t sure whether this sounds more like a blessing or a curse, but it reminds him of Obi-Wan’s blue eyes and the soft press of his lips. He asks Treme not to speak of the Jedi again, but the man laughs, centuries old, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “They don’t grow in power from you speaking about them. That’s just a myth. They’re just scared children, our cousins. They’re like plants in too small pots, no room to grow.”

Nabeam, true to his word, teaches him how to read and write and speak sand language, explaining that it is impossible to master one facet of it without the other two. By this point in time, Chirrut has stopped questioning their methods, stopped debating with himself whether they are good or just hint at madness. He knows, of course, that no one ever stops being a Guardian of the Whills. There is no retirement. You serve until you die even if there comes a point in time when you can no longer serve. Sometimes, while he is bent over the books that Nabeam provides, trying to force the strange letters into making sense, he wonders if this is what happens sometimes when people can no longer serve the Whills, if they go out into the waste and turn into Guardians of the wild kyber, growing as untame as the crystals that scream in the caves below them.

He learns. In leaps and bounds, in fits and starts, from all of them. Sometimes he falls to the ground and has to get back up by himself because there are no extended hands. The wastes teach you what they will not let you learn in the temple, which is to be so self-sufficient that you forget you are part of an order at all. Nabeam’s jaw will get so tense that Chirrut knows he is fighting against the moment, desperate to break the lesson, but SoSo will put her hand on his elbow, and he stills.

No one can teach you what the wastes teach you, Chirrut learns. No one can teach you that level of sadness, that level of freedom as standing in the whipping wind, robe pulled over your face to keep the sand from scouring off all your skin, and listening as the kyber belts out in joyous song below you, and the Force unwinds all around you like a ribbon. And Chirrut knows that he is the only one who sees it, but he sees it. In the dark. Everywhere. Every night. The flicker of those dark eyes. And he hears the steady beat of its heart; it sounds like kyber, and it sounds like words, low and long, fluttering, whispered against his ear, “I am near. I am near. I am near.”

Chirrut reads the book on Force creations during his night shifts when he is hunkered near the mouth of the cave around their small and spitting fire. He reads it again and again until the words fill his mouth, and he speaks less to those around him for fear of everything else tumbling out into the light where he can’t hide it anymore.

He no longer thinks that the Force creations are just a parable made up to teach people gratitude for the things that they have.

He no longer thinks that Myek was wrong.

Sometimes, he hates that knowledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the Guardians Rook are related to Bodhi.
> 
> Also, a small note on relationships:  
> Nabeam and SoSo = married  
> Nabeam and Adair = ex-lovers
> 
> These are neither here nor there really but somewhat inform interactions.
> 
> Also, I love the waste guardians dearly even if they won't all tell me their stories.


	4. The Empire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for death and mourning in this chapter and all that brings with it, esp anger and depression.
> 
> (I'm not gonna say that parts of this aren't direct catharsis for me, but I'm also not going to say they are, either.)

It might be hard to transmit information through the wastes, but they see the smoke on the horizon. Standing outside the cave mouth in his now worn and weathered Guardian robes, Chirrut can see it, drifts of it, from the direction of NiJedha, and the kyber has begun to wail, long, low shouts that make him pace the perimeter of their camp uneasily, unsettled, pensive energy tight and coiled in his stomach, though he has no idea what to do with it all. Chirrut knows what he wants to do, which is to race out across the sand back to the temple, to never stop running until he reaches the gates and sees what is happening, but he knows it would never work. He is not light enough, he is not fast enough. If he were to throw himself out into the desert in haste, he would be swallowed, never to be seen again.

It doesn’t make patience any easier, though.

“What’s happening?”

Nabeam is at his elbow, arms folded over his chest, face as downtrodden as Chirrut has ever seen him. “We don’t know. All that’s coming through the comms is static.” This is not unusual, but the way that Nabeam says it is, tight and concerned.

Treme and the man whose name Chirrut never learned, not once in two years, left yesterday afternoon, bowed and gave their apologies and then disappeared into the rest of the sand around them. “They’ll be fine,” Kai had said afterward, but Chirrut noticed the way her mouth twitched at the edge as though she wasn’t sure.

“Are we going?” Chirrut looks over at Nabeam.

“In the morning. We have to pack, break down as much as possible and carry it with us.”

He doesn’t get to ask why because the other man, as though sensing the oncoming questions, continues to speak.

“If we all leave, the camp is defunct. We can’t leave anything of value here. It has to go back.”

Chirrut does not ask about the kyber. He learned quickly after coming to the wastes that the assignment of guarding this kyber cave was mostly a farce. There is no need to do so. The Force is so strong here, the crystal so wild, that no one dares venture close. The kyber keeps itself. If anything, it is the cave that guards them, and Chirrut wonders, not for the first time, whether this is meant to be a place for Guardians to go when they simply cannot continue to be Guardians but have no other way out.

“Kai is coming?”

Nabeam nods.

Chirrut tries to keep the surprise off his face because he has never seen Kai go anywhere except from one of their shelters to the other. She won’t even enter the mouth of the cave, preferring to sleep in the rickety structures outside despite the fact that they are exposed to the wind and the sand and the brunt of the infrequent rains when they come. Something has happened between her and the kyber, her and the Force, maybe her and the Whills, he thinks, and she has her limits. In all the time he has known her, Chirrut has not even heard Kai mention the Whills. She talks around them, praises his training and competency but never mentions where it came from, what it is they serve. He tries not to think about how she sometimes clicks her tongue at the colors in his robes, the navy and the red, which she does not wear. Kai wears only black, which makes her green skin seem brighter than it is by comparison.

“The voyage back will be harder than the voyage here,” Nabeam says, turning to head into the cave, probably to assist SoSo in getting everything packed up for their departure. “Keep that in mind, Chirrut, and carry nothing that you do not need. And remember that all is as the Force wills it.”

Of course, it is. Of course, it is. All is as the Force wills it. Though those words, that mantra, feels like sticky rice in his throat as he watches the smoke curl into the air over where he knows NiJedha sits on its mesa, where the temple is, where the kyber cave and its city of silent, glowing worms linger.

Be safe, he thinks, hopes his prayers will fall into the Force like pebbles into a stream to be swept along back to the temple. Be safe, we’re coming.

 

They are too late to stop it. By the time they reach the mesa and climb into the city, the fires have stopped, the smoke has cleared, and the damage has been done. It’s not readily apparent from where they enter, at the far side of the city opposite where the temple is located, which was done on purpose. The temple is on the other cliff face, to keep it safe, to minimize the number of paths that could be used to take it by surprise. The high ground. It doesn’t occur to Chirrut how futile this is when there are ships that fly across the expanse of the galaxy until they reach the temple gates and find them smoking, twisted as though some giant reached down from the sky and grabbed hold of them, wouldn’t let go until it managed to rend them.

His chest feels empty, and he doesn’t realize that he has dropped to his knees until SoSo’s hand is on his elbow, jerking him roughly back to his feet.

“Stop that,” she chides, but her voice shakes, clatters in much the same way that he can feel his heart has sped up to an uncomfortable rate in his chest. “There’s no time for that. You’re a Guardian of the Whills. Not a child.”

There are tears on Nabeam’s face, and Kai’s hands are clenched so tight, Chirrut wonders if there will be blood on her palms when she finally loosens her fingers.

SoSo’s next words ring out to their group, huddled in front of the gates, no one daring to cross the threshold as if that will make the destruction before them utterly real. “All of you. We are Guardians of the Whills. Our hearts are the foundation. Our backs are the walls.”

Right now, Chirrut thinks, it could be a bad dream. They could blink, and it could melt away, back into what they know, back into what is normal. Not this.

“Our backs are the walls,” Kai repeats and then strides forward, through the mangled mouth of the gate, though Chirrut notices how she maneuvers her body around the metal, dares not to touch a single bit of it like it might burn her or hurt her still.

Nabeam’s breathing is labored where he stands with his eyes shut tight, tight like if he doesn’t look it won’t be real, and Chirrut is quick to follow Kai, to leave the Guardians Rook alone, though he is not fast enough to miss SoSo’s hissed words, full of ire and loss, “Wipe your face.”

There are blaster burns on the ground, holes in the walls, blood and dirt smeared together on the pavings that Chirrut used to scrub clean as an initiate when he did not mind his masters. It is like walking into a place that he used to know but can no longer recognize. Something about it feels like home but not. And with every step he can hear the keening of the kyber far below their feet, though the Force is predominantly silent and thick around them, a stagnant pool, shocked into stillness. As they walk, he brings his hands up to push it away in front of him despite the fact that he knows the gesture must look out of place and strange. Kai, if she notices it, says nothing. She remains a figure all in black. Even in coming back to the temple, she did not don the navy and the red emblems of their rank. Chirrut has never asked her why. Her tentacles twitch minutely as they walk, he can see the movement out of the corner of his eye.

It is very silent, and it is very still. Chirrut does not know where everyone has gone. The temple should be full of initiates, tenders, guardians, masters. They have seen no one. They have heard no one. It makes his stomach churn, and he tells himself not to be sick on the stones because he is a Guardian but also because he doesn’t know who would clean it now other than him.

“Take the grand hall, I’ll take the caves,” Kai says, voice so much flatter and level than he is used to hearing even from her. It reminds him of the steady beeps from the handful of droids that clatter through the temple doing their simple chores.

“Is it wise to split up?” he asks and hates how it makes him sound like a child, like he is afraid to be on his own, unsure of what nightmare may be lurking around every corner. Mostly he hates it because there is some truth to that. Chirrut doesn’t want to know what might be around every corner, and he doesn’t want to be alone for it. The temple has been his home as long as he can remember. Until going to the wastes, this was the only place that he had ever known, and it feels like someone has reached out and scooped the heart out of it, replaced it with darkness and the fear of the unknown. It is more the wreck and ruin of his childhood and less the possibility of stumbling on to whoever has done this that worries him the most about being alone.

Kai’s look, when she finally turns it on him, is more gentle than he would have guessed. “It’s too big for us to stay together, and I doubt the attackers are still here. The fires have stopped, the smoke has cleared.”

Neither of them mentions the fact that the silence is the worst enemy they could face. The temple, for all its mantras and talk about meditation and quiet, has never been a completely silent place. There have always been too many beings inside of it, too much kyber around it, for that to occur. Except now. Except now when Chirrut can clearly hear each and every breath that he and Kai take, thinks that he can hear the temple settling on the mesa, the grass and trees growing in the courtyard. It seems like even the wind has stopped blowing into the windows. It is more than unsettling; it is chilling like the prick of the Force when walking over unmarked graves.

Chirrut doesn’t want to be alone in the temple. Even when he was a youngling, at night, wandering the halls in the darkness, trying to avoid being found and taken back to bed by the guardians, he never felt like this, this almost paralyzing terror of being by himself, but he also does not want to lose face in front of Kai. And neither of them know where the Guardians Rook have gone, though he suspects that SoSo is probably checking the perimeter. Knowing Nabeam, he may have talked his wife into letting him slip into the city, to seek out his family and check on them. Chirrut tries not to think too much about that, the stories Nabeam has told about his siblings and their children, his grandparents, all of them. It is better to try and hold everything at arm’s length than consider what might have been lost. He thinks about the gates, metal, twisted beyond recognition, yes, but just metal, fixable, replaceable. (Not like people. People cannot be replaced.) And he remembers the scorch marks, the holes. These things can be cleaned, repaired. All these small signs of damage can be wiped away. That is what he focuses on. That and breathing. One breathe in and then out. Steady.

Next to him, Kai fidgets with her staff, the tip ending in a sharp blade that Chirrut has felt whoosh past his cheek on more than one occasion, and tries again. “Would you rather take the caves? I know you hear the kyber.” Kai has said that she does not. Not even when she meditates, not even when she tries, not even though she has been trained the way all of them have been trained, and Chirrut wonders whether this is why she does not put the navy and the red back on, why she is only this smear of black on black robes and green skin. “I wasn’t sure if it would be better or worse for you there.”

He is a Guardian of the Whills. His life is bound to the temple. His life is forfeit for all those inside of it. This is what he agreed to when he choose this path. Yet he did not think it would come so soon. “I’ll take the caves,” he agrees after a long moment, and Kai nods, once, stately and serene, always the sort to minimize her movements and then peels away from him, heading toward the great hall, the site of festivals and speeches and announcements, a place that, like the whole of the temple itself, should be teaming with life instead of echoing hollowly. Like a tomb, he thinks and then forces the thought away before it leaves an imprint on his heart.

Steeling himself against what he might find, what he might feel, Chirrut heads towards the kyber caves. The song of the crystals resonates in his mind the entire time, wistful, sad, and he knows that something is wrong, though they, as ever, won’t speak in anything he can understand, not fully.

As he walks, he thinks back to a conversation he had with Master Adair, several years ago, before he became a Guardian and left, before Obi-Wan even, when Chirrut was in the cusp of time between childhood and adulthood, when Master Adair was one of the few who would answer him without fail. Standing in the aisles of the archive, following the master from one shelf to another while they sorted or put things back or just visited the books like they were old friends. “Can anyone speak the language of the kyber?” he had asked.

Those eyes had turned to regard him for just a moment before going back to the more important tasks at hand. “I don’t know that it’s a language, Chirrut, so much as it’s just the way that life sounds.”

“But it’s not all the same. It changes. It must have a meaning. Someone must have figured it out.”

“Life changes, too, young one.”

And Chirrut had just sighed and shrugged because he didn’t have a good rebuttal for that but it also hadn’t satisfied him, that answer, because it was so simple, too simple. As simple as the sun and the wind, though he knew the explanations behind those things. They could be deceptive and misleading because they were always there, but they had secrets hidden, they had meaning. He knew those. All he wanted was to know the meaning behind the kyber, too. “You could just tell me, you know,” he muttered, hurt, as though Master Adair was in league with everyone else who kept him in the dark about things, all the masters with their secrets, all the guardians with their missions, all the other initiates with their friends. And Chirrut outside of it all, orbiting in their gravity but never enough to be pulled in. “Not everything has to be a lesson.”

Master Adair had properly and fully stopped what they were doing at that point to face him and reached out their sharp nailed hands to gently but firmly sit on his shoulders. “Chirrut, everything is a lesson. Even when we don’t want it to be. Your job is to learn from it all. While I would like to say that someone somewhere can speak the language of the kyber, I don’t know. I don’t think they can. It lives, yes, but not quite like we do. It lives in the Force more than anywhere else. Maybe our lost cousins can speak to it, but they never mention it. I imagine that if they ever could, it has been lost to them inside of their own ambition. The kyber sings. That is all we know. No one is hiding anything from you here.”

Chirrut had just looked at them for a long moment until Master Adair pulled away and went back to the chores at hand. Maybe he should have said thank you or apologized for being cross, but he had done neither of those things. No, he had just stood there, thinking about it, trying to decide whether or not he believed it, while Master Adair slowly worked down the aisle, moving steadily away from him the entire time. He just stood there, lost in his own thoughts, not helping or speaking.

It is a strange moment to remember now that he is creeping quietly through silent halls, listening to the pitch and the moan of the kyber below him, but he does at least see now how everything is a lesson. Maybe he will tell Master Adair that when he finds them, when this is all over, when the temple has been set back to sorts. Chirrut will not return to the waste with Kai and the Guardians Rook, he thinks. His novice hood is over. He is more than prepared to come back to the temple of the Whills. He wants to talk to Master Adair about the Force creation in the book that is in the same place it was when he left, tucked into the pocket of his sleeve. There are so many questions that he has, and so many stories that he can tell.

All he hopes is that there is time enough to tell them.

The door to the kyber cave protests when he attempts to open it like it is both locked and barricaded from the inside. Chirrut is strong, but he is not strong enough to budge it. In the end, he has to backtrack and find the entrance he took Obi-Wan down years ago. It is long and winding. It takes ages and makes him feel like years are passing by him.

When he reaches the opening, he hears voices that are not just the crystals and hastens his steps, sending rocks skidding across the floor. It creates the sort of ruckus that he would be chided for by any of his teachers, but he does not care. All he wants to do is find the source of those voices. He does when he pitches forward to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, faced down by several hundred pairs of eyes and weapons pointed in his face.

“Wait, no. It’s me,” he manages to get out before he starts crying and loses all his words.

 

They tell him, Master Adair is dead. The archive is in shambles.

Master Adair is dead. The four words ring through Chirrut’s mind. They stop and start and cause the rest of the world to make very little sense. They are all he can focus on for the first couple of days and time is thick around him like the occasional sand fogs they experienced in the waste. The mesa is too high for those, he knows, but he can picture them gathering around the base in much the same way they flood his thoughts.

Master Adair is dead.

He is seated at a long table, surrounded by masters and guardians, their voices a rising cacophony that he cannot sift through. It just sounds like tangled, twisted yelling, like the songs of the wild kyber that will never be tame.

“What were they after?” His question surprises himself and the assembled throng enough to cut through it, enough for them to turn to look at him, though no one says anything.

This is not the sort of assembly Chirrut is used to, and if they've said why he is here he's missed it in the fog of his own thoughts. The colors around him are blues and purples and subtle yellows with a scattering of navy and red, but, though there are Guardians, Nabeam and SoSo and Kai are not among them. He only faintly recalls the last time he saw them: Kai’s green skin with an unnatural pale when, after seeing the bodies positioned on the floor of the great hall, she found him in the caves, Nabeam muttering to himself in something not unlike sand language as he paced the perimeter of the temple the next day, and SoSo just sitting under the largest tree in the courtyard, looking ever at her hands, searching for something in them that no one else seemed to be able to see or looking at something only visible to her.

“What were they after?” he asks again and a whisper ripples from one side of the room to the other.

Master Adair is dead, his mind hisses, threatens to swallow him back in that reality, but he pushes it away for the moment.

One of the elder masters, clothed in diplomacy (Chirrut does not think about how that obviously didn't do them any good) clears her throat and folds her hands together in front of her on the table. “We're not completely sure yet. The breadth of the archive is only known to a few and with,” she stops herself. “With the droids having been destroyed we're not sure of the extent of the damage or what, if anything, is missing.”

Chirrut does not mention the fact that the droids wouldn't have known even if they had been spared. Master Adair was more careful than that, never entrusted so much data, so much importance to them. For all their boundless good qualities, Master Adair like so many others in the temple only saw the droids as senseless spinning machines.

“We were actually hoping that this was an area where you could help us,” the master continues, and Chirrut feels a vague, far-off pang of guilt that he may have ignored something they've said while drifting in his own thoughts.

“Why me?” It sounds selfish to his ears, but he does not take it back even though he should. He is a Guardian of the Whills, protector of the walls, fighter for the Force, a martyr to the cause. He should not question whether he can help. All he should do is offer his help in anything, in everything, wherever he can, anywhere he is needed. This is what he should do, but should does not always dictate one’s actions, and his brain is full of the roaring noise and the fact that Master Adair is dead.

Who was there to protect Master Adair? Not him. Not him.

If it even occurs to anyone to chastise him, they make no sound. The elder master continues to speak, and Chirrut figures that she is the figurehead for this conversation. “With the archive. With figuring out what they may have wanted, why they came.”

He knows that Master Adair’s was not the only death. He knew that the moment he stepped into the cave and scanned the faces that some were missing. There were many new ones that he did not know--such things can change in a couple of years--but still there were gaps, holes where he should have recognized grim eyes or the set of a mouth, Guardians who taught him, initiates he trained with, masters who guided him, lost now, gone home to the Force.

Before their time, he thinks, harshly, stubbornly even though he knows the argument. Everything is as the Force wills it, but it does not feel like that right now. The air inside the temple, the flow of the Force around him, it does not feel steady, feels less like the river he has been used to wading in all of his life and more like a stream diverted, stopped up, interfered with by others. He would like to know who so that he could track them down and twist a knife in their gut, smash their throat in with a precisely aimed blow of his staff. Revenge weighs heavy in his heart, threatens to drag him down. It is unbecoming, but that means little right now.

“Who were they?” he asks, still walking around what has been said to him, what has been asked of him.

“They call themselves the Empire.” The master will no longer look at him; she is looking at her hands, but Chirrut will not drop his gaze from what he can see of her face. “Our lost cousins came to tell us about them. Of their desire for power and more control over the Force.”

The meeting. Obi-Wan. “That was over two years ago.”

“Yes.”

“They came to warn us.”

“Yes.”

“We did not heed them?”

“I cannot go into particulars with you.” Her voice is hard, fortified like the columns that hold the ceilings of the temple up. They say that nothing will shake them. They claim that they will stand forever.

Chirrut is no longer sure that these assurances are true. Now that he knows how to feel for it, he can discern how the mesa rocks with the winds that howl out of the wastes, and he thinks about the water in the kyber caves, how a stream can wash away a mountain if given enough time. Everything ends in time, he thinks. Even the Whills. “What did the Jedi want?”

“I cannot go into particulars with you, Guardian Imwe.” The master’s voice is tired under the steel. “You were not part of the council then, and you have not been elevated to that status now. We are asking for your assistance because there is no one else in the temple who has the knowledge of the archives that you do. Master Adair,” her voice wobbles for a moment before she hurries on, “only took one person under their wing. They had not found another to bestow their teachings on so there is only you.”

He sighs, world-weary and long because of course there is only him for this task. Had he expected that as soon as he left Master Adair would find a new initiate to groom, someone else to take through the process of shelving and rearranging and cleaning and dusting in either comfortable silence or while answering whatever questions popped into their mind at any given time. Master Adair has never been the type to seek anyone out. Chirrut himself had only become an option because he had inserted himself into their life, into the archive with his quest for the information that he keeps tucked into the sleeve of his robe. Chirrut pushes a hand into his hair, grown long, kept pulled back in intricate braids taught to him by SoSo, and shoves away from the table. Sooner is better than later. He wants to just get this over with and move on to the next task and then the next one. On and on until things stop feeling so out of sorts, until something settles back into place again.

He is several paces from the door, and decidedly alone, when the clearing of a throat stops him, makes him turn back to the faces gathered around the table, looking at him with everything from shock to disappointment. The master who has taken point on the conversation thus far is the first to speak, though even she seems to be at a loss for words. “Guardian Imwe.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Excuse me?”

“To the archive. To go through the books.” He has a sinking feeling that he already knows what to look for, already has a sense of what they were after considering the weight against his arm, the book he knows forward and back as well as any of the mantras of the temple.

The master looks at her hands for a moment before facing him again. “We did not mean you needed to press yourself into doing it right this moment. We understand that this must be difficult for you--it is difficult for us all--and that you may not be prepared to perform this task right now. You can feel free to take some time to prepare and then we can reconvene.”

Cowards, he thinks but does not say because it is not fair. It is not fair to them, and it is not fair to him. They are not cowards, he knows this fact, but it is still the thing that rises from the anger and the clench of pain in his heart. He remembers what the Jedi warn about anger. Part of him wonders about Obi-Wan, whether he is safe or if he has befallen the same fate as Master Adair. “I would prefer to go now. I would rather get this taken care of as soon as possible. It’s what Master Adair would have wanted.” The archive cannot be left in shambles like a bleeding wound untended. Without attention, it will rot and fester, poison from the inside. The archive being out of sorts might not become dire quite as fast, but it is still a concern that needs to be examined.

“I suppose you can stay if you want. I can bring my report back to you.” He means for his tone to shame them. He is the youngest in the room by far, the least experienced, and he wants to shame them. Again he realizes that it is beneath him, but Chirrut cannot get himself to stop.

The master flushes and then quickly rises, followed by a few of the other masters and guardians. “No, no. Guardian Imwe. We will have a small contingent join you, though we ask for a little while to prepare. Do you agree to wait for us there?”

“Yes.” Each word is easier than it should be. “I will wait for you outside the main doors.” He does not mention that he already has an inkling about what these people wanted because he needs to check first. “Can someone ensure that we will have access to the locked section?” he asks before stepping through the door at the end of the room.

“I’m sorry?” The master’s eyes are wide and full of the sort of confusion that Chirrut had not been expecting. He had expected an argument, another quiet insistence that he is not privy to such things, but he had not anticipated the look of unknowing that he is faced with.

Something is strange. “The locked section. I think we may need to check that.”

“There isn’t one. I don’t understand. Guardian Imwe, all knowledge is accessible in the Force. All knowledge is freely given in the Whills. There is no locked section.”

His heart hammers and his mouth dries at these confessions but he manages to rule his face, to keep it quiet and passive. “Of course. My mistake. I will wait for you there.” There is a voice screaming in his head the entire walk through the temple, all the twists and turns and hallways that he crosses between the meeting room and the door to the archive. By the time he reaches it, his eyes are stinging, and he wants nothing more than to hit something, anything. All knowledge is freely given in the Whills, but all knowledge was not freely given by Master Adair.

With no one around, the only thing he can talk to is the door, the pad that he has used to access the archive at all hours of the day because he had the access. Freely given. “What were you hiding?” he asks, but the doors do not reply, the shouting voice in his blood does not reply. “Was it this?” he taps his sleeve, knuckles making a thunking sound against the hardcover of the book. “Was it always just this? Why would you lie to me like that?” The only noise is the sound of wind coming through the windows in little huffs that sound like Master Adair’s particular brand of laughing.

Turning, Chirrut presses his back against the door and puts his face in his hands, willing the angry tears to stay, trying to push his ire down, down into his belly to examined further later. “Why me?” he asks the empty hall, the wind, the doors at his back, the strange ghost presence that he almost thinks he feels but can’t be sure whether that is reality or wishful thinking. “Why did you ever pick me?”

Nothing answers.

 

By the time several of the masters and guardians from the meeting have joined him, Chirrut has managed to piece himself back into a facsimile of someone who cares about all of this instead of someone who just wants to run and hide in the kyber caves and do nothing but watch the worms spin their webs, slow and precise and unaware of everything that goes on around them, suspended in something simple. It is a childish thought, he knows, this desire to hide, and he is far from being a child anymore, but it is still has a tempting quality to it. He does not promise himself that he will stay away forever, just for the moment, just while they need him. As long as he can manage.

The doors open on a scene that makes his chest clench inward like his heart has turned into a gaping black hole ready to suck the rest of the world into it even if it means rending him apart from the inside. He had been told that the archive was in shambles, but there is something different about hearing a thing and actually seeing it. His imagination could not fill in all the florid details that surround him: shelves turned over, aisles scorched, books and scrolls haphazardly strewn across the floor. He cannot see the grouping of datapads from where they are, but he thinks that they would also be littered on the ground likely mixed in with pieces of the droids who used to whir blissfully and sadly from one to one making sure they were charged. Even though he knows that it might be futile, he hopes none of the information has been damaged too badly. Unlike Master Adair, Chirrut has not read everything in the archive. He might be able to spot certain volumes or pads missing, but there is no way that he could replace them, recreate the knowledge found in them. There is too much knowledge in the archive for anyone to retain. Except for Master Adair, he thinks.

“It will take a while to set things right again,” he says, barely cognizant of the fact that he is speaking at all.

“Yes,” the master at his side confirms. “Are you sure that you are capable of determining whether anything was taken considering the state of this place?”

It is not meant to be taken as a challenge, but he does anyway because it will help keep him moving forward, it will help him put the task in the forefront of his mind instead of wondering whether the floor he crosses is stained with Master Adair’s blood. “Yes.”

Despite his knowledge and his time spent working in the archive with Master Adair, it has been two years and at least one rearrangement without him has been done in that time combined with the fact that someone has very carelessly shifted through the titles, and it takes Chirrut longer than he thought it would to confirm his suspicions. When he finally finds the section where the long, rambling texts on Force discourse should be, the theories about what can and cannot be done, whether it should be, the eternal questions about what the Force is and why it is, they are gone. In aisles full of knocked over books, littered like pebbles across the floor, there is just this blank, empty section with nothing there. Except a few specks of something colored like rust that he does not, will not, cannot think about, cannot linger on because if he does it will all unfold, and he will be ten and crying alone in a corner somewhere again because he has no friends and the Force is over loud in his mind.

The weight in his sleeve seems to increase fifteen-fold as though it knows its fellows have been stolen, and it needs to fill the gap. Chirrut remembers those texts, the nights spent lingering on them, lost in them, trying to read them and then growing bored because of the length and breadth of them. Force discourse has never been a fun thing to read, he thinks, but he can understand why those hungry for power might reach for it. It smacks of abilities that it never quite reveals.

“Master,” he starts, the first thing he has said in at least twenty minutes while they circled from one section to another across the wide, rambling layout of the archive, “were they Force users?” Like the Jedi, though he cannot bring himself to make that connection aloud because it brings with it the memory of sad eyes and russet hair and lips, soft and hesitant, against his own.

Her face is grim and answers him before her words. “At least one.”

“They took the texts on Force theory.” Chirrut tries not to listen to the soft gasps that rise around him, tries to just let himself barrel forward. “Maybe in an attempt to increase their power or abilities.”

“They took kyber as well,” one of the guardians adds, speaking out of turn though no one admonishes him for it.

Chirrut nods because it makes sense. Kyber, books on Force work. These are the reasons why people wanting to glut themselves on power would attack the temple of the Whills. Yet it is also a reason why these self-same people might want to attack the Jedi. “Have we heard anything from the Jedi?” Are they safe? he wants to ask. Are you safe, Obi-Wan? He wants to scream into the sea of the Force around him, turbulent and choppy and distressed. Yet part of him does not want the answer, isn’t sure he could manage it in combination with everything else.

The master folds her hands, unfolds them, tucks them into her sleeves and will not look at him. It speaks as loudly as any words that he has ever heard. When she finally answers, there is resigned shame in her voice. “We are not sure. We have not been able to hail them.” And information is a long time coming to Jedha. For all their prowess, for all their influence, information is slow to trek its way across the galaxy to the Whills. And the Whills has a certain air of otherness to it. Pilgrims bring their faith, not their gossip.

His arms are suddenly very heavy. “We need to find out.” A murmur of assertion ripples through the gathered crowd and one of the Guardians peels off, hopefully, to do just that. “I think I might know what they sought.” Especially if they wanted power, especially if they knew the Force. “I don’t want to tell you until we know the fate of our cousins, though.” Because if they are whole perhaps they can work together, perhaps there will be no need for the weight in his sleeve, the rending of life and soil and the Force into a physical being, a protector. Chirrut does not understand all the consequences, all the possibilities in the book, but he knows that it is a last case scenario, a means of protection when all others have been lost.

We are not there yet, he thinks, he hopes. We are not there.

“I’m going to bed. Please wake me when there is news.” If anyone tries to stop him, he does not heed them. Chirrut walks through the aisles, picks his way around tortured, wounded books to the doors. Later, he will set the archive to rights. He is the only one who can. You could have picked another, he thinks to Master Adair, wonders if they can hear him now that they are of the Force, now that they are everywhere. This is quite a lot to do alone. I am sorry that I left you.

In the Force around him, something stirs. The thing that he has known for years. The thing that never comes close enough for him to truly know. It gathers, hunkers, lingers. Chirrut feels its presence near him as he falls into sleep, protective, like a guardian.

 

The news will not be fast, Chirrut knows, because news is never fast to Jedha, even when they are searching for it. While he waits to hear word of the Jedi, he seeks out his friends, the Guardians of the waste who seem lost and adrift now that they are folded back into the Whills. Nabeam is easy to locate because the other Guardians cluster around him at all times, a knot of bodies, and he is never left alone. He grins when he sees Chirrut, but the smile does not seem real, looks fake and forced and out of place on his face. Stop it, Chirrut wants to tell him, but he does not because who is he to command anything from anyone.

Nabeam peels away from the cluster of those around him to walk at Chirrut’s side as they circle the courtyard--Chirrut dimly wonders where SoSo has gone if she is no longer here under the trees--and they are both quiet for a long moment. “Have you seen your family?” Chirrut asks for want of anything else to say. Part of him wants to ask about Master Adair, if Nabeam has seen the body. No one would let Chirrut see it before it was cremated, the ashes given to the wind, spirit given to the Force, lost and beyond him now forever.

“No,” the man says with a long, slow shake of his head. “This is not a time for that family. This is a time for this family.” Everything about him screams that he longs to escape the temple walls, to disappear into the city of NiJedha with its twisted alleys and leaning buildings, to submerge himself in his family language and maybe never look back.

“Maybe you should,” Chirrut suggests, hands tucked into his sleeve, fingers resting on the book in his pocket, ever reassuring himself that it remains there, that it remains safe. Master Adair wanted it safe, and he will keep it that way. He fears that each passing day brings them closer to making it a reality, the fable that he was once told as a child, the story he sneered at because he did not want to admit that there could be something he did not know. Now, of course, he realizes that there are a great many things he does not know, that he will never know, and even what he does is tinged with his own mind. Nothing is ever actually the truth, just a truth. “To make sure that they are okay,” Chirrut adds when it seems like Nabeam is not going to respond.

“The Rooks are a hardy people, Imwe. I imagine they are fine.”

Chirrut wonders if maybe Nabeam does not want to be proven wrong in this sentiment. If he had a family in the city, if he knew of them, Chirrut would seek them out now, would want to convince himself that they were safe, unscathed by the damage, by the reach of the Empire. He would want to touch their faces and linger in their presence and never leave their side. At least, that is what he thinks he would do, but it is all supposition because Chirrut has no one. Especially now.

“Chirrut,” Nabeam’s voice is insistent but not hard and the fingers that tighten around his shoulder are solid, something to focus on.

When he looks at the other man, he knows that he has missed something, sunk away into his own world again, lost in the thrum inside his mind. It happens a lot these days. Master Adair is dead, his brain will hiss, distract him, lead him away. Master Adair is dead, and Obi-Wan is probably dead, and there is only you left in the whole wide universe. You and the Whills. And you will need to carry it on your back and break yourself asunder for it because that is what you vowed to do. You alone.

He knows these whisperings, these haunted words are not the full truth, but they fill his time nevertheless. The only thing that sends them spinning away is that presence in the dark, growing closer, ever closer. Chirrut has reached his hand out at night, stretched his fingers to the edges of his room where he thinks he can see it hunkered, and all but wept for it, but it will not step forward. He wonders if it even can. He wonders whether it is actually there or simply some Force remnant stuck in his head, attached to his overly heightened senses. Part of him hopes that he never finds out, isn’t sure he could continue forward without it, without at least it.

Nabeam’s fingers grip just a little tighter. “Chirrut, how are you?”

The question tears at him because he isn’t completely sure of the right way to answer it. Does he spare Nabeam’s feelings or his own? There is no way to do both. One way or another, they will both end up hurting. He is just trying to measure and figure out the path that leads to the least pain. “I’m tired.” His fingers toy with the ends of his hair, and he isn’t sure about the length or the braids anymore, considers shaving it all down again, a fresh start or a return to the past. He isn’t sure which option is more cowardly. “There is so much that needs to be done. And there is so much waiting.”

The full details of the thing have not been made explicitly public so Chirrut has to be careful, has to watch his words in ways he does not care for, but everyone in the temple knows they are waiting for word on the Jedi so at least he does not need to carefully edge around that.

Nabeam’s free hand finds his other shoulder, holds onto it just as tightly. There is no sense of budging. There is no semblance of weakness, just a solid weight to hold him, and Chirrut lets himself lean into it. Nabeam is taller than him, broader, and his face has lost its smile, full of a concern that could almost be paternal. “No, Chirrut, how are you?” and he stresses the last word.

It unlocks a series of boxes in Chirrut’s heart that he had scarcely been aware were there. “Master Adair is dead,” is the only answer he gives, voice small, small and meek, younger than he has been in so many years. Young and alone and frightened and full of too much knowledge because the Force never stops whispering, doesn’t know enough to stop when it becomes overwhelming.

He’s folded into the man’s chest before he can realize what is happening, arms around his back, and Chirrut is crying with a force so strong that he can think of nothing other than the rivers that pound down the mountains and into the sands when the rainy seasons come, when the sky splits open and water falls, thunderous, tormented, onto their moon. He weeps until he thinks that he has become a flood himself and then continues past that point, the only other sound Nabeam’s voice, small, soft, soothing, a mess of words accompanied with pats on his back. “It’s okay, Chirrut. I know, Chirrut. You can cry. You can mourn. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

There is no mention of the Force and its will. Chirrut is glad of that, doesn’t think he could stomach the platitudes.

 

That night he sleeps more soundly than he has in most of his life, exhausted, completely worn away at the edges, and he dreams. In the dreams, there is shifting smoke and fire on the horizon. In the dreams, he is afraid, and the Force howls around him like the wind through the halls of the temple. He is stumbling through those halls pursued by something in black. Black everywhere. Black even flickering behind it like some strange tongue waggling. When he finally pushes through the door to the courtyard, it disappears, the ominous, looming shadow, it melts away beyond him even though the taste of ash lingers on his tongue.

In the courtyard, there is sunshine. In the courtyard, the temple gardens remain, and someone sits under the large tree in the center. Chirrut calls a name he cannot hear, but his lips speak it anyway, and the figure looks up at him. The face fades away before he even sees it. He wakes with a start, the image of cracked rock burned into his mind for some reason.

 

Each day starts the same for Chirrut, he wakes and washes, dresses and meditates and then visits the masters to see if any word has come about the Jedi. When he finds none, he retreats to visit the kitchen for a morning meal and then holes himself up in the archive, working to set it to rights. It is slow going, and he will not accept any help because no one else knows how Master Adair would have wanted it ordered, and Chirrut is in no mood to explain it. In the end, he knows that it will simply be easier if he does it all himself.

So he is surprised to find Kai leaning against the closed doors to the archive when he arrives that morning. She is still only in black, the green of her skin slightly pale either from the quality of light in the hall or because of the lack of standing forever in the open sun the way they had in the wastes. Chirrut’s tan is also starting to fade away, little by little, as though it was never there at all.

“Good morning,” he says simply as he steps forward to the access pad, which allows him entry without any fuss or hesitation.

Kai moves the moment before the doors open. “I heard your droids are ruined.”

Nodding, he crosses over the threshold and turns to the corner where he has diligently been working, sorting through the books and scrolls to discern which ones need to be thrown away, which are fine, and which might be able to be repaired by someone more clever and skilled than him. “Utterly.” It seems like neither of them are in the mood to mince words.

“I can fix them.”

It is the second surprise of the day, and Chirrut imagines that he does a poor job of hiding the shock on his face when he looks at her because Kai sighs and glances away like his eyes embarrass her. “I didn’t know,” he stops himself because of the way her lips press together and her fingers drum on her leg like something dangerous. “I’d appreciate that. There aren’t many in the temple who are capable.”

When Kai speaks next her words come out like stones thrown against a wall. “I know. Most of you are useless with machines. But I built these. I can fix them.” She pauses and brushes a hand across her robes, and Chirrut sees how she lingers where other colored sashes would be if she allowed them. “Maybe not all of them. I can at least get you one. That’s as much as I’ll promise.”

It is one of the few things about her past that Chirrut has ever heard come from her, an inkling of something, and he wants to be able to ask more, wants to be interested enough to ask more, but is neither. Even after the crying, the mourning, the pouring out of hurt with Nabeam yesterday, he feels divorced from himself, trapped and weaving his fingers through opaque jelly in an attempt to locate himself again. He cannot be bothered to ask; he supposes that Kai will probably be thankful for that. “I’d appreciate it. Do you need anything?” Tools, food, tea, a prayer. Chirrut would give her anything she might ask for right now.

“No,” she shrugs, the sort of easy effortless movement that accompanies everything Kai does, and he wonders if that is the same for all her people or if it is particular to her. Kai is the only Twi’lek he has ever known. There are no others at the Temple of the Whills, and this confuses him, too. How did Kai find herself here? Why don’t others? “I know where the tools are.”

“There are tools here?”

When she looks back at him over her shoulder, she is almost smiling. “Imwe, I would have thought that you, of all people, would have already sussed out all the secrets of the archive. What did you spend your days in here doing?”

He remembers. Reading in the small, secluded nook. Following the green robes through the aisles. Talking endlessly and circuitously while Master Adair listened. And all the knowledge that would flow from Master Adair, an endless stream of strange lecturing and point blank truthful answers. But no sneaking around, no attempts to see if anything was being hidden from him. He always thought the archive’s secrets, if it even had any, would open themselves up to him when he was allowed to see them. He believed that when he was ready, they would be there. Oddly, he never attempted to seek them out himself. “Trusting Master Adair,” he answers because that is what all of this boils down to, isn’t it? He obeyed the rules because they were Adair’s rules, because he wanted their respect, their friendship.

Kai turns slowly to face him, arms crossed over her chest. “Do you regret it?”

Chirrut thinks about the revelation about the locked section, how it didn’t exist, how it was never anything except what? A trial? A lesson? He doesn’t know now, and there is no one to ask. But does he regret the hours spent here, wandering, talking, listening, reading? “No.” It is not a lie. “I regret losing them.”

“Are you mad? You can be mad.”

He isn’t sure he wants to touch that fire, shifts his weight from one foot to the other instead of answering, considers turning on his feet to stalk off to the corner and sort the books, say farewell to those that cannot be mended and pretend it doesn’t hurt. Instead, he opens his mouth, and the words tumble out, a litany of confessions that make him feel young again. What is it about the archive that makes him ramble? “I’m mad at the Empire. I’m mad that we weren’t here to do anything to stop them. I’m mad that Master Adair is gone. I’m mad that I have to do this alone, and I’m mad that no one can help, even if they would, because they don’t know what to do and I’d have to do it anyway. I’m mad that we haven’t heard about the Jedi.” He closes his eyes because looking at Kai, watching her unblinking and unmoving is adding to his frustration. “I’m mad that this is so hard, and it hurts.” By the time he finishes, he is breathing so hard that he might as well have just finished a spar.

“We were six people in the sand.” He looks at her, and her face is blank but honest. “Us being here wouldn’t have made a difference. And it would have only been four since two cannot ever cross the gates again.” Kai shifts and sits on the floor in a meditation pose that Chirrut has never seen her take before.

“No need to be mad about that one then, but I get it. You think, oh, maybe I could have saved them. But you can’t. That’s not it works. And I’m not talking about the Force, Imwe, I’m just talking about battle. You’ve never been in battle. The trials don’t count, the training doesn’t count. At the end of the day, those people will pull their punches, those people are not out to hurt you because you’re their brother, you’re their friend, you’re their family. That’s not battle. Battle is people who don’t think you’re a person, just an obstacle to their goal. It has to be that way to get things done.”

“I could have helped.” His words seem to slice through his throat like broken glass on their way out, and he is amazed that blood does not seep across his lips.

“Just as easy to say you could have died.” Her words are weights that he’s surprised do not dent the floor. “And then no one could put the archive back together again. Or know what they took.” When he looks at her in astonishment, she waves a hand. “It’s obvious. You don’t pillage an archive unless you want something. If you just want to take something away from its holders, you burn. If you want something, if you need something, you pillage but don’t ruin.”

Chirrut thinks that it is a waste Kai is not a master, not a teacher, even as things inside of him seem to slam shut with every truth she utters.

She runs a finger across the wood floor. “I don’t think you’re mad you have to do this alone. I just think you’re mad that you’re alone. You don’t have friends here, Imwe. No one sprints out of doorways to hug you, hold you, make sure you’re okay. Your peers are wary, the masters seem in awe of you, and the Guardians whisper. You hear the Force, and you hear the kyber sing. Sets you apart from them.”

“How would you know? You said you don’t hear the kyber.” His words are jagged and rough, harder than he means them to be because he wants her to stop. There is too much in the air, and he needs her to stop before she opens doors he doesn’t want to be revealed. This is not like talking to Master Adair or Nabeam, there is no sense of solace here, no attempt to console. This is like training and having every inch of his body smacked with a staff because he is too slow.

Kai has never pulled her punches. “I don’t. I wouldn’t have been friends with you either.”

Something in his chest clenches hard like a fist, and he wants to scream at her and ask how she thinks this is helping him.

“I wouldn’t have been friends with you when I was younger because you would have scared me. They’re scared of you.”

It releases. Slowly. Though it still seems like a struggle to breathe evenly.

Kai stands smoothly, a blur of black robes and green tentacles and her staff with its blade on the end. Chirrut wonders why she still carries it through the halls, wonders why she needs it, wonders what happened so many years ago to send her into the sand, casting bits of colored fabric behind her as she went. He thinks he will probably never know. He tries to be okay with this as she crosses the floor to stand in front of him.

“You can be mad at Master Adair.”

“I’m not mad at them.” It’s supposed to be the truth, but it doesn’t really sound like it even to him.

“You can be mad at Master Adair. It’s okay. You can be mad that they left you. Alone. In this mess. With no one to help you. With so much weight on your shoulders. You can be mad about it. But you are the walls of the Whills. You are the foundation.” She pokes a finger against his chest, and it seems sharper than any blade. “You can be mad, but you cannot crumble. You cannot fall.”

Chirrut shoves her away before he knows what he is doing, mouth pressed tight to hold back a scream that he can feel like hands attempting to climb up his throat from the blackness inside his body. “I never asked for this. I never asked for any of this. I wanted to be a Guardian. I wanted to protect the temple. I didn’t,” he gestures his arms wildly at the chaos, the marks on the walls, the burns in the spines of books, the disarray. No matter how wide he throws his arms, though, he cannot encompass all of it. The hurt that gnaws at him from the moment he wakes until he goes to sleep, the waves of grief that rise and drag him under, the anger that he is not yet twenty-three and the world seems to have imploded around him. And Master Adair, his voice of reason, his mentor, is gone, left him with a world full of questions and a bookful of answers that he doesn’t know what to do with. And that Obi-Wan may also be gone who left him with so much less, just a kiss for goodbye. “I didn’t want this.”

“No one ever does,” she says, as though it is simple, and it claws under his skin in a way that makes him want to scrub every bit of it off.

“What do you want?” he asks, still angry and lashing out at Kai because she is right there in the face of the storm. “What do you want from me? Why me?”

Kai huffs, a noise that sounds very much like Master Adair’s laughter, and turns on her heel as though done. “Why anyone, Chirrut? Be angry. Be hurt. You’re alive. This is living. Use it to keep other people alive. Use it to be better.”

Maybe it is meant to help, but he just feels hollowed out, aimless, adrift. Kai walks away from him, and Chirrut leans against a nearby table, heart wailing inside of his chest. It doesn’t receed for ten minutes, and he can hear the noise of metal ringing against metal as Kai works on the droids somewhere. It rings out through the archive, louder than it needs to be. It reminds him that he is not alone, and it continues as he works through the ruined books; it continues into the night, the sudden silence a signal for him to quit his task for the day.

 

SoSo is, unexpectedly, in the kitchen when he enters, dressed in the standard uniform of beige and short sleeves, up to her elbows in flour. Chirrut considers turning on his heel and leaving, full up with interaction for the day after the conversation with Kai in the archives, but he is hungry, and he has not seen SoSo for a few days. He wonders if this is why. Everyone seems to be jumping in to help where they can, no matter what has happened around them, no matter how poorly they feel. Then there is him, feeling adrift, holding information to his chest, waiting. And mad about it. Stuck in it like a mud pool, unable to move.

Be angry, Kai had said to him before. Be hurt. Use it to keep other people alive. Use it to be better. Chirrut is not using it for any of those things. He is just holding on to it as if it were a weight and letting himself sink.

There is a moment where he considers fleeing, simply turning on his heel and exiting the kitchen, but he is hungry. Besides SoSo has already seen him even though she says nothing, gives him the chance for escape if he will take it. So he slumps onto a stool next to the long table where she works and watches in something that is almost a comfortable silence.

“I didn't know you were here,” he says when it has gotten too long, too drawn out for him.

SoSo looks at him and then taps her elbow against a bowl. “Eat something, Imwe, or help. Those are your only available options.”

He fills the bowl with broth and noodles, even fishes out a couple of dumplings and then sits back on the stool while she kneads the dough. In any other setting it would be nice, he thinks, but things being as they are it is tense and strained.

Even though the conversion with Kai was grating, he would gladly take that over whatever this is, this pointed lack of interaction. It is not a balm so much as a worry deep in his gut, some strange tickling of the Force that he cannot interpret and isn't sure how to interrupt.

“They think you're being quarrelsome and childish,” SoSo says, but for all the inflection in her voice, it seems like she could just as well be talking to the noodles instead of him.

Chirrut is tired. He would rather not sit here and listen to this, but he is tired and that prevents him from standing and taking his leave. Instead, he remains where he is, focused on the food in the bowl and that way that SoSo’s hands work the dough as she rolls and rolls and cuts. The motions are soothing to watch even if the words grate against his nerves.

“You don’t have to be what they want you to. It’s okay to take your time with it, but if you can, help.” SoSo shrugs, but it does not look out of place. The motion never breaks the steady way that she works. Like so much else about her, everything seems to have been planned in advance. The only times he has seen her look anything less than fluid was that moment when they first walked through the gates and then beneath the tree, looking at her hands like they had somehow wronged her.

“I am helping.” It is said to his bowl more than it is said to her.

SoSo sets one batch of noodles aside and turns to more of the dough. “Then don’t feel poorly about it.”

So much easier to say than to do, and Chirrut wishes, not for the first time and not for the last, that everything was different, simpler. It feels like he is rolling a stone up a hill that never ends and with no place to rest while people clamor around him, constantly asking why he hasn’t finished yet, why he is lacking. “I thought you were going to tell me to be better.”

“No,” there is something in her voice that shakes but then goes away, and he wonders if he ever heard the quaver at all. “It’s not my place to put that burden on you. I just want you to do your best considering the circumstances. That’s all.”

He doesn’t know how to respond, and it is almost a blessing when the kitchen door swings open to reveal a slightly out of breath Guardian whose name he doesn’t know, eyes wide, mouth hanging who scans the room quickly before his eyes alight on him. Oh, Chirrut thinks. Oh, something new has happened. He tries not to feel like he wants to sink into the ground.

“Guardian Imwe,” the man says, and Chirrut is already standing because that sort of haste would not accompany a simple greeting or a man looking for a late meal.

Chirrut’s only answer is a quirked eyebrow and silent waiting. Near him, he can sense that SoSo has stopped what she is doing, potentially watching the events unfolding around her. All he can hope is that this counts as helping. He is too tired for much else.

The Guardian takes a moment to try and compose himself, but it is plain in the way that he stands and how his hands twitch a little that something is amiss, and Chirrut despairs, only briefly, but enough that he feels a swell of shame before the words come. “There has been word about the Jedi. The masters would like to see you.”

There has been word about the Jedi. Not from the Jedi. About. And the distinction in the meaning of those words adds another layer to the exhaustion that he thought, until that moment, was impossible to feel. Shoulders slumped and not caring about the appearance of it, he nods once. “Of course. I will be there directly. Please let them know I am on my way.” There is no sense in questioning the messenger. Chirrut already knows that the man in front of him has been told no more than he needs to be, than the words that he has already given. That is the way the Whills works, after all. All information is free, but that does not mean all of it is given. No matter what they might say to the contrary.

The man at the door nods once, looks at him as though he expects some action, some movement, and then, almost begrudgingly, makes his exit in a fashion just as hasty as his entrance.

“That sounded important,” SoSo says.

When he glances at her, she is back to working the dough. “Yes.”

“You should probably get going.”

“Yes.”

“Brother.” There is something so much softer in her tone than anything he has heard before, and Chirrut didn’t realize there were tears on his face until she hands him a towel to dry them. “Be the foundation just a little longer.”

His only response is a nod that is thanks just as much as acknowledgment, and he holds onto the towel as he walks out the door, passing the fabric over his face several times during the trip up many stairs and through all those winding corridors. There has been word of the Jedi. What does that mean for them? What does that mean for Obi-Wan? How many more loses does the Force have in store for them? Chirrut tries to find his peace in mantras, runs them all through his head as he walks, but they bounce off his heart instead of sticking there and offering peace.

All is as the Force wills it. But why has the Force willed suffering?

The darkness shivers, but he has no time for it now. Find me later, he thinks at that glimmer, that pulse in the night that will never come close enough to satiate him. Chirrut has stopped wondering why, has simply started being grateful that it returns to him at all because it helps. In the dark, in the night when everything is too loud. He can focus on the way it shimmers, the way it seems to sing like kyber crystals under his fingers. It helps him sleep. It helps.

But not now. There is too much happening now, and he needs to focus on that. As if it knows, it recedes, slips back into the Force, slips away from him, and Chirrut tries not to feel emptiness anew in his chest, though he knows that it is coming. Another blow is coming. All these surprises have been bad, and he is getting tired of it. The book in his sleeve is heavy, a physical remainder of everything he has been asked to carry. Soon he will have to put it down or risk falling over.

The room, when he enters it, is thick with silence and a hanging ominous feeling despite the fact that only a handful of masters and guardians are waiting for him. Chirrut has to force himself to continue moving, one foot in front of the other, because all he wants to do is flee, turn on his heel and curl up in some corner of the kyber caves where it is not quiet but different, better, not so pressing, not so dire. You are the walls of the temple and the foundation. The Whills depends on you, he tells himself, and the words move him forward, inch by inch, to the seat waiting for him at the table. It seems to take him two cycles to reach it, but no one says a word or makes any move to indicate their disappointment. No one looks at him at all.

“There has been word from the Jedi?” he asks when it becomes clear that someone has to go first and because some part of him, small and curled and young, remains hopeful even in the face of adversity that has risen to glower at him recently. Perhaps it was just a cloud passing over the face of the sun, a stone in the river of the Force. Perhaps it will wash away. What has happened cannot be undone, that is true, but maybe it will not get worse.

Please, he wants to say, longs to beg the room but manages to keep the traitor words from slipping out. Please, tell me it will not get worse.

It does. Of course, it does.

“There has been word about the Jedi,” Master Wren, the one in diplomat colors, the one who asked him about the archive, says, though she will still not look at him, and her hands on the table shake slightly before she tucks them into her sleeves.

About. Chirrut does not understand how one word can hold such despair, how one word can make him feel like the bottom of the universe has fallen, leaving them plunging and tumbling through endless, unknown space. The last time his heart clenched like this and is still clenching, may never unclench, was when they had uttered four words, when they had told him that Master Adair was dead. One word should not have the same power. He wishes he were still a child, lonely but never truly alone, with the whisperings of the Force and the wind, wandering the hallways, never afraid because the Whills would hold steady, the Whills would hold him, there were Guardians at all the doors, there were protectors at all the gates. There was the Force, and the Force was neither good nor bad but it was there, and it was steady.

All is as the Force wills it.

May the Force of others be with you.

As a child, he never thought any of these things could be negative. As a child, he never thought they could fall. Now everything is falling, and there is nothing to hold onto. His hands curl around the edge of the table as though that will be enough to grasp, as though that will be the center and the calm. It is a lie, of course, but it is all he has left. That and the book that knocks about in his sleeve, his arm a mess of bruises that he no longer feels.

“Tell me.” His voice is a shadow of itself, and he can barely recognize it as his own. It no longer fills corners, now it lingers across the ground like the fog that gathers at the base of the mesa on rare occasions. Chirrut is not sure what will ever make it lift again.

Master Wren takes another deep breath and still will not look at him or at anyone. Her head is bowed, and he can see, now, how old she is and how tired. The weight of the Whills, the weight of the Force is heavy on her, on them all. They are all the foundation, cracking and straining beneath the burden that they have taken upon themselves. It is only bearable, he thinks, because we carry it together, but the more of them that fall, the less there are to hold it. What will happen when we are too few? Will it all come crashing down? Or will it simply smother us, slowly, inch by inch, until nothing remains?

“The Jedi have fallen.”

There is no sun. No moon. There is no air. There is no air, and Chirrut cannot seem to catch a breath even though he is gasping for it, bent over the table, practically wheezing. Control your body. Control your breathing. Mastery of the self. These words, these lessons buzz in and out of his mind almost faster than he can perceive them, but he cannot get there right now.

A steadying hand is placed between his shoulder blades, and a voice counts from one to ten for him. His body, full of muscle memory that will not fail him even when his mind and spirit reel, takes over, falls into the pattern taught to the younglings from infancy, the trick of calming down when the world spins out from under you. The hand remains, the voice remains, counting, and Chirrut breaths with it until the spots clear from his eyes, and he can hear again. Not that there is much to hear. The room is silent except for the monotone litany of numbers and slight shuffling from people embarrassed to be witnessing his weakness.

“I’m fine,” he says, though his eyes remain locked on the table in front of him, and the hand remains.

“Guardian Imwe?” The voice does not attempt to shame or condescend.

Chirrut reaches behind him to wrap fingers around the wrist in gratitude before sitting up, nodding, and the hand is whisked away as though it was never there, but the heat remains, steady and sure. They are all connected in the Force. His weakness is their weakness. The Whills must remain strong. They are the foundation. Especially now. “Forgive my interruption, Master Wren.”

Her eyes are wet. No one mentions it or his moment of panic. “We don’t have all the particulars. All that we have been able to glean is that the Empire, perhaps before or even after their visit here, laid waste to the Jedi order. They are no longer. It is up to the Whills to protect the Force now. As it was before. We have been the sole caretakers in the past. The burden is heavy, the cost is high, but we will prevail. We must prevail. We are the Whills.” The fact that she keeps her voice from shaking seems masterful to him.

All Chirrut wants to do is a find a corner in the kyber cave, in the dark, sink into the warm pools, watch the glimmering lights everywhere, and weep. At the memory of a brush of soft lips across his own. And blue eyes bright, so bright they almost put the kyber itself to shame. Lost to him. As surely as Master Adair is lost. How many losses can the Force abide? More than he can. That is the only thing Chirrut knows for sure.

Something occurs to him in the space after Master Wren finishes speaking, something he had never properly thought about before because he never really needed to, the way of the universe prevented it. Jedi Knights. Whills Guardians. There seems to be a disconnect between the two, and they will need something to make up the difference. Yes, they are warriors, but never quite the sort that the Jedi seemed to be.

When he takes the book out of his sleeve and places it on the table in front of him it is like chains have fallen from his back and shoulders. Now maybe he can move again. Now perhaps something inside can heal. A little. Until the next wound is dealt. All of the eyes at the table are focused on the book with its simple cover. Chirrut places a hand over it, and it is warm to the touch from so much time spent near his body.

“I think this is what the Empire was looking for, and I think it is what we may need to utilize in order to give ourselves an advantage. Master,” his voice sticks, shakes, and he has to take a moment, clear his throat, and try again. “Master Adair gave it to me to protect before I went on my novice hood. I think they knew something was coming.” Probably based on the meeting with the Jedi all those years ago, but he leaves that unsaid. “It’s in sand language, but I have read it. I can translate.”

“Guardian Imwe, what is it?”

He takes a deep breath to steady himself because he knows how the next few words will sound and what kinds of looks they will garner him. He knows, but he pushes onward anyway. “Have you ever heard of Force creations?”


	5. The Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some sexual situations are mentioned in this chapter, though it's mostly in the form of dreams. Also, we continue to see depression and mourning.
> 
> FYI: This now brings us to the point where all edited and ready chapters have been posted to the amount of time until the next post might be a bit. I am still actively working on this story, but I haven't been editing or prepping anything for posting, just trying to get the story out.

It begins with clay.

 

The process of gathering materials has begun. Chirrut knows this not only because he is part of it but because he has ducked into the kyber caves beneath the temple and seen the pallets full of bits and bobs pulled from every corner of Jedha itself. The creation must be of Jedha as it must be of them, and so the things to create it are many, varied. Glass and yarn and twine, flowers from every corner of their moon, dust mixed with spices that he knows come from the paths of the marketplace, sand from the wastes, everything. Everything that is Jedha and the Whills spreads out before him on those pallets.

He stands with his hands in his pockets and just looks at it all before them, collected and cataloged, placed in careful order because the Whills has always liked order and organization even if they aren’t so sure about this move itself. It makes the older Masters wary, but if makes the Guardians feel secure. It has set at least half their order into seemingly non-stop praying to the Force in an effort to calm their hesitation. Chirrut, for his part, doesn’t understand their reluctance.

If it works, they will have something on their side that can protect them, prevent more deaths, potentially prevent the fall of the Whills if the Empire comes back. If even the Jedi could not stand before the Empire, what chance do they have? They are warriors, but never on the same level, the same caliber as the Jedi. The Whills protect, the Whills guard, the Whills stand. They are the foundation of the Force, and the Jedi served as its arms. What will happen if they all tumble into darkness, are pulled back into the seas of energy, are lost to the waking world? What will happen to the knowledge of the Force? Will it slip away, there but never known, never understood, a forgotten undercurrent?

Sometimes, at night, when he thinks about Master Adair and Obi-Wan, he wonders whether it would be better that way. For no one to know the Force at all. To just have it present but never question it, never worry over its intentions. He wonders, and the thing in the dark moves, thrums, as though to console him, as though to ensure that he understands there is more, there is a point. It hovers with its roving eyes, and its presence, sorrowful and yet soothing, just out of his reach, no matter how far he extends his hand. It is enough, though. He doesn’t know why, but it is. It is enough to propel him forward, onward, to the creation even if it seems like the creation itself will be a sort of cleaving in the Whills.

Change is not always a gradual thing. It is not just water slowly eroding rock away day by day, inch by inch for years at a time. It can also be a flash flood, born seemingly out of nowhere, forever marring the landscape that it rushes over, never to be the same again. The trick is to take a deep breath and hold on tight, make sure you are not swept away by the tides. Chirrut feels like he is clutching so tight that there should be cuts on his hands, bruises on his knuckles, stress fractures in his fingers. When he flexes his hands, he wonders why they do not ache with the effort of it all.

The pallets in the kyber cave are almost full, almost ready for it to begin. For them to try at least. No one has ever succeeded at this before, he reminds himself, and he has only read the one book and the one child’s fable. The book talked in philosophy and surmises, the theory of the creation without any concrete proof that it had ever been attained, just what had been attempted. What had failed each time it was attempted, though it does not say why. Chirrut thinks that it is impossible to say why, and he does not know why they should have any better luck than the masters of old except for the fact that they need it now, desperately. In a universe without Jedi, in a universe with the Empire dark and looming on the horizon, they need every inch of Force strength they can garner. And the fable, of course, a story of a man successful who failed because he refused to be grateful for the gift given to him. It is not a lot to go on. It is not much to hang hopes on, but it is all he has. More and more, it seems to be the only thing his hands can fit around.

They’re just missing the heart. Heart of kyber, steadfast, gleaming, powerful. Big enough for the body, big enough for the intention behind the creation. Chirrut has been spending his nights in the kyber cave, wandering the tunnels and strolling around the warm pools, listening, feeling, but none of the crystal sings for this task. It is quiet when he asks, and he does not know if this is because it does not think itself worthy of the task set before it or because it does not approve. He has spent so many years with it and is still unable to really tell what the singing means, how the melodies line up to thoughts, whether there is any intelligence behind it at all.

All Chirrut really knows is that the kyber does not sing when he looks for a heart here, which means the heart must be somewhere else, and he needs to find it. There is nothing to be done without the heart. The book was clear about that. The heart must be present. The heart must be strong. Nothing will ever come of anything without the heart.

He worries that he will not know it when he finds it, that he has strayed too far from himself and the teachings of the Whills, that the world has gotten too heavy around him, weighted down his legs such that he cannot break the surface. Chirrut worries about many things, but he does not let any of that stop him. If he stops, he doesn’t know if he will ever be able to move forward again.

The heart is not in the kyber cave under the mesa. It does not linger in the calm and tamed depths of the twists and turns that he has known since childhood, strewn with glistening seams of crystal and warm pools of water. It is not with the spinning, silent worms in their sparkling webs. It is not at home. It is somewhere else.

 

He sets off across the sands with the Guardians Rook and Kai to go back into the wastes, to seek the heart in the wild cave nestled in the middle of the Jedhan desert, away from everything, itself a stronger being in the Force than anything Chirrut ever used to be able to imagine.

Their trek is slow, and he does not find that he is impatient for it to be over. It seems appropriate. They had rushed back to fight, to save what they could of the temple only to find it broken without them, the enemy gone, their approach far too little and far too late. It only makes sense that their voyage back to the camp in the middle of nowhere has this dreamy, slow quality. Sometimes, Chirrut thinks, nothing seems real anymore, and he lies awake at night, listens to the almost being in the Force that will never draw near enough but breathes and sighs, and wonders whether anything since Obi-Wan has been real. Maybe he slipped and hit his head in the kyber cave trying to seduce the Jedi under the glowing of the worms. Maybe he drowned in the waters after managing to cajole the other man into swimming with him. Perhaps he has been folded back into the Force itself but in disgrace, which is why he is tormented in this way.

It would almost be better, he thinks, than if all this tragedy was real.

But it is real. As real as the stacks of clay that wait for him in the kyber cave under the temple, wait to be molded and settled together, wait for eyes and ears and breath. And a heart. A heart to outshine all of them.

The fire pops, and Chirrut focuses on it instead of on Nabeam and SoSo’s voices where they are animatedly talking a few feet away from the camp itself. It is too cold for them to be gone for long, and the winds will start soon, the ones that pick up enough sand to rend flesh right off of bone or bury an entire hut if it wished. It is still early enough in the season that they should not have to worry about either of those options, but he knows that they will return shortly and then all of them will huddle into the mouth of the small cave to wait for morning and safer passage.

“Why are you coming back with us? You’re no longer a novice. After all of this, they’re certain to make you the master of the archive.” Kai’s voice is solid, interested but not cruel, asking because she is genuinely curious rather than because she wants to twist the knife deeper into its wound.

Chirrut wonders whether it will ever stop being a wound, the mere mention of the archive, the fact that Master Adair is dead and will never be anything other than part of the Force again. Part of him, the larger part, the one that is tired and wants to hand over all of these burdens to someone else to carry, is tempted to tell her everything, about the Jedi, about the Force creation he has talked the elders into allowing him to attempt like it is nothing more than a new mantra. It is so much more. It is potentially the only thing that can keep the Empire from taking everything else away from him. Or it will be nothing at all. Then he will have truly failed everyone.

“I don’t want to be master of the archive.”

“Not even after I got your droids working again? That’s a little unfair.” Kai is stretched out on her back looking up at the sky, and Chirrut wonders whether the stories that she knows about the stars are the same ones that he knows. “You might be the only one who can do the job now.”

“I can teach someone else how to do the job. I’m a Guardian. I will always be a Guardian.”

“So be a Guardian of the archive then.” She sighs like he is young and stupid, which Churrut supposes is true. “The temple looks and feels like it is always one way, will always be one way, but it’s not. The Whills are always changing. Like the wind. The Whills are like Jedha, like the Force. Nothing is ever fixed completely. That’s the Jedi way.”

He winces. Another knife in another wound but this is one that Kai doesn’t even know about. They have chosen to keep the loss of the Jedi as much of a secret as possible, as much of a secret as the Force creation. So many secrets. Chirrut has never liked the withholding of information, whether from others or from himself. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet, and it wavers. “I don’t know if I could manage to guard the archive.”

Kai throws a knife into the air, catches it, tosses it back up like it is nothing. Like it is not sharp. Like this is not a deadly, dangerous game that she is playing. He wonders, not for the first time, whether she has truly lost the feel of the Force or whether she just says that, whether it speaks to her in different ways than the rest of them. “Give it time, Imwe. Time heals lots of things.”

“It didn’t heal whatever rift is between you and the Whills,” he points out, and it’s base, and it’s cruel, but he hurts.

She crosses her hands on her chest and moves her head slightly to one side so that the blade shucks fully into the sand up to the hilt, sheathed, no longer a threat. “No, it didn’t. But that’s on me and not the Whills or the Force. That wound lies open and bleeding because I pick it apart whenever it tries to heal.” He can see her eyes in the darkness, lit by the wavering flames of the fire. “It’s not a good idea to encourage bleeding, Chirrut, but it gets me by.”

He knows better than to ask what happened so long ago, why Kai allows it to stay, encourages it to bleed. “You could leave Jedha.”

Her sigh turns into a laugh with no humor in it. “I would sooner leave this state of existence than leave Jedha. It’s not Jedha I bleed for, and I am closer to Jedha in the wastes than anywhere else except maybe in the caves.”

“But you don’t go there.”

“Can’t. Can’t go there.”

“Are you bleeding for the kyber? For the Force?” he asks before he can remember that he should not, that this is not his place, nowhere near his place to ask. Kai, whether or not she accepts the title Guardian or not, whether she wears the colors or not, is still his elder, and he should respect whatever silence she takes.

“Are you bleeding for the Force?”

Chirrut puts a hand over his heart and thinks, maybe. Maybe he is. “I don’t know.”

“It’s never simple, is it?” Kai’s voice is wistful and far away, though still loud enough to drown out whatever is it that Nabeam and SoSo are discussing a few meters away.

“No,” Chirrut says after a pause, “it’s not,” because she’s right. She’s so often right, and he wishes she would stay at the temple, in the Whills, because he thinks that it would be good for him, for all of them, to have to listen to Kai’s rational voice amid all the philosophy and doctrine that swirls around sometimes. It would be good to have someone around who seems to be incapable of becoming kyber drunk and Force blind to reason.

They are silent for several moments, and then he hears her pull the blade out of the sand. “You didn’t say why you’re coming back with us. You’re not staying. I can already tell that.”

“How?”

“You keep looking around like you’re never going to see the wastes again, like it’s beautiful.”

“It is beautiful.”

The blade glides lazily through the air as she throws it, and it seems to fall slower than it should. Someone else might ascribe that to Force work, but Chirrut thinks it is just Kai’s supreme force of will at work, not a Jedi trick. Why would any Guardian of the waste know a Jedi trick? Why would any member of the Whills know a Jedi trick?

Is his Force creation the beginning of something he will be unable to stop? The slow descent into Jedi tricks, walking away from the knowledge of the Force and towards the use of it? Chirrut scrubs a hand over his face to try and push the thoughts away. There is no other choice, and this is what Master Adair wanted.

Kai’s voice sounds like a shrug, which is something that only seems possible with her. “I guess it is. But everything’s beautiful if you look with the right eyes. That’s the sort of eyes you have, Imwe. I wonder what you would do without them.”

“Trust the Force.” He answers without even taking the time to properly consider the words. He answers like a Guardian of the Whills, like a Master.

“Trust the Force,” she repeats, humorless but there’s something, a wish, a want under it that Chirrut doesn’t know how to hear so he lets it go, sliding into the darkness of the night around them, carried off by the wind into the expanse of the desert to tangle into the skeleton trees that dot the surrounding shifting sands.

He clears his throat, desperate for a change in subject. “I’m on an errand to find a piece of kyber.”

Kai moves. He can hear her shift across the sand, but he doesn’t look, isn’t sure he wants to see. “In the wild cave. Good luck. For a weapon?”

Chirrut has already crafted his staff, already plucked a singing, shuddering chunk of kyber that beckoned him from one room to another, followed it through the caves until his fingers found it. They both know he doesn’t need another. “For hope,” he says, and it’s not a lie but it’s also nowhere near a concrete answer.

It must, however, be a good enough answer for Kai because she grows silent, and the only sound between them is the blade as it slices through the air, always the air, never her hand, until Nabeam and SoSo rejoin them for dinner before bed.

 

Neither Treme nor the man with no name are at the camp when they arrive, and Chirrut isn’t sure why this surprises him. When he mentions it to Nabeam, he just looks at him and shrugs. “They might never come back. It’s hard to say. They’ve been in the wastes longer than any of us. If anyone knows where to go and when, it’s them.”

“Will you ever tell me his name?”

Nabeam, face always pulled tighter these days, eyes flatter, smiling less and less often as though something heavy and new has become lodged in his heart that he doesn’t know how to shake, simply settles a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not mine to tell, Imwe.”

Everyone in the wastes is full of secrets; the wastes are full of secrets. Chirrut wonders how many tales are hidden beneath the shifting, roving sands, wonders sometimes whether he can plunge his hands into it and pull up a whole new civilization, a completely different world that exists just beyond their own. Maybe in that world, the Force would always be unerringly kind. Maybe in that world he would not have been pushed into what feels like a situation he has no chance of winning. He doesn’t know, and he’s too afraid to look because what if all he finds underneath it is bones and death, something far worse than what he is living through now, something far worse than he can even consider.

The attack on the temple has changed every one of them. SoSo is quiet, introspective, speaks little, moves less. The same woman who took him through his novice hood, who taught him to push down the spikes of energy from the wild kyber, who bested him in one sparring match after another, has taken to spending a lot of her time cooking. It reminds Chirrut of finding her in the kitchens, of lingering there with her because just her presence, silent as it was, was comforting in some small way. Nabeam, too, is quieter, more subdued. This, Chirrut knows, is not just because of the loss of friends. Their way of life, the temple, the Whills, it has been shaken. And he has not even spoken to them of the Jedi. He wonders what that blow would do to his friends who unpack their provisions quickly and set the camp back up as their home, these waste Guardians.

It is Kai he spends most of his time with now. Kai who talks to him, which is strange because she was the one, other than the man with no name, who had the least amount of words for him before. He thinks that whereas the attack wounded something in the Guardians Rook, it awakened something in Kai, though she still will not accept the title, still will speak no other name than the one she has given herself, still does not wear the colors, sticks only to black. That means little, Chirrut thinks when he looks at her. Of all of them, she is the one who looks the most like a Guardian now. Clothes do nothing. Clothes are just trappings. It’s the heart that matters.

In more ways than one.

It’s the heart that matters. It’s the heart that’s brought him here.

Though his heart, it seems, is not quite up to the task.

“It’s been two weeks, Imwe, and you still haven’t gone into the cave.” Kai, as always, is matter of fact and pointed without being pushy. Sometimes Chirrut wishes she would be pushy; it would make things easier.

“I haven’t.” His time has been spent avoiding, wandering the edges of the camp, helping set back up all the things that were torn down quickly before they left, trying to salvage items, put them in order. On the surface, he tells himself that this is because he owes a debt to the waste Guardians, they took him through his novice hood, he has learned a lot from them, they have suffered from the coming of the Empire as well, but it is not just that. He is hiding here in the easy tasks, in the day to day labors that do not hold the wellbeing of their moon on the precipice. He wishes, though he dare not say it aloud, that there was someone else to do what needs to be done. There is, of course, no one else. The book is back in his sleeve, bruising his arm anew, because there is nowhere else for it to be, nowhere else that is safe. When he tried to leave it with the elders, they would not touch it, would not look at it, and he had to put it back where it rested all that time before they would acknowledge him again.

“Won’t they be missing you? Won’t they worry that you haven’t completed your mission?” Kai sighs, and he looks at where she is standing, her staff resting on her shoulders, arms looped around it, dressed still all in black and nothing else. She looks calm, but her eyes betray her. There is weariness and watchfulness there.

“Do you not want me here, Kai?”

She rolls her eyes but will not meet his own. “The wastes aren’t meant for you, Imwe. You can come to stay for a while, but you’ll never be of them. Too much temple in you. Too much you can do for the temple as well.” When her gaze finally settles on his, she looks determined and concerned. “They need you. With your Force sense and your knowledge of the archive. They’re set in their ways. They won’t take chances. Not like you. You picked us to train you. Whatever mission you’re here on, they didn’t send someone else. Not an elder master or higher guardian. They sent you, a fledgling by all rights. It means something. You mean something. Unless you throw it away.”

He starts to say something, but she holds up a hand and turns from him, starting in the direction toward the sand dunes where she trains and where, he thinks, she waits for Treme and the nameless man to appear. “Don’t throw it away, Chirrut, but if you do, you can’t hide here. We’ve already seen through you.”

The cave mouth looms in front of him, far-reaching, and he can hear the way the wild kyber calls each to each in the tunnels that are below him. It’s better than it was when he first came with Nabeam years ago, but that is not because anything with the kyber has changed. It is because he has gotten attuned to it, better at focusing around it, stopped trying to make it fit into the patterns and the songs that he has always known in the depths under the temple. This kyber will never be that kyber, which is okay. It sings and calls and pulses, flashes in the dark. It’s still full of Force fire, and something else, something darker.

Chirrut considers going into it, wading through it, hands outstretched, searching for the right bit of it to take back, the piece that will be sunk deep into the chest they will manufacture from clay and sand and string. And paper. The impulse to just go ahead and get it over with rises, crashes against him like a wave, but then it retreats; he is left holding his head in his hands and listening to the sound of his own breathing, too fast, too shallow. Beneath him, the kyber continues on with life as though it doesn’t know anything terrible has ever happened, and Chirrut isn’t sure he can be the one to break the news to it yet.

 

Finally, after more fretting around with things that are already put to rights and several pointed glances from all of the waste Guardians, even Nabeam which is the most surprising of them all, Chirrut makes the descent. He remembers the way the cave brought him low when he first visited it, when he followed SoSo into its twists and corridors. He remembers, but he does not fear that outcome this time. After a moment’s consideration, he foregoes a lantern but grabs his staff, wondering whether the bit of kyber embedded in it will be enough to light the dark. The wild kyber cave is different, the crystals grow larger but further apart, they have to shout to be heard by each other. There are no warm, lingering pools of water to slip into. There are only shallow puddles, cold and stagnant. No kyber worms spin their floating webs here, tiny strings of moonlight scattered over everything. It is just seams of rock and crystal and the eternal yelling of rocks that have never been tamed, will never be tamed.

Chirrut stands at the mouth of the cave and takes a deep breath, tries to steady himself, tries to put the ultimate goal in the forefront of his mind. This is for Jedha. This is for the Whills. This is for the temple. This is for every living and breathing thing on their moon. This is for the Force.

And, more personally, this is for Master Adair and Obi-Wan.

It is for him.

Find a heart of kyber full of light. Find a heart bursting with power, strong enough to lift the universe up, bold enough to protect them. A heart made of Jedha, made of kyber, made of Force. It has to be fit to withstand any amount of sorrow. It needs to be enough to protect them all. Chirrut stands at the mouth of the cavern, fingers clenched white around his staff, wondering whether there is any heart in the whole wide galaxy that is big enough for the task he means to set before it.

What if he brings something to life and it is just destroyed, the way so many other things have been destroyed lately?

What if he does not bring something to life, and everything he knows is destroyed because of the lack?

It is an impossible situation, an endless conundrum, a question with no right answer except that he can feel the Force gather near him, waiting, lurking, hunkered in the shadows of the wild cave. He is tempted to yell at it, to hurl accusations and questions, demand answers for why everything has happened, why it has become painful and out of hand, but he knows that it would not answer. The Force does not work that way, he reminds himself, centimeters away from hating that truth but unable to fully step into it to accept it.

He steels his grip, he grits his teeth, he walks forward into the wailing, swirling darkness of the wild kyber cave, and in the Force, the thing that has lingered with him for so long walks with him. Like a friend. Like a trusted ally.

“One day,” Chirrut says as he picks his way carefully down the sloping floor, eyes on the ground to watch for stray rocks or holes because despite the fact that he has spent years here he does not know it well. This is not the cave under the temple that he could navigate through with his eyes closed, trusting in the trills of the crystals to guide him; here every movement forward could bring him closer to disaster if he doesn’t pay attention. “One day, you will give me answers. One day.”

The thing in the Force seems to stop, and he thinks that if he looks at it askance he could almost make out a face tilted, eyes regarding him quietly and strange. He thinks that if he could look at it through his eyelids, he would know it fully and completely. But he cannot do these things so he just allows it to follow him, inch by inch, step by step, into the roaring blackness of the cave with its flashes of light in the walls.

Chirrut has heard the stories about Force visions that can come to people who wander into kyber caves looking for answers. He has heard the stories, though he has never believed in them. As a child growing up in the temple of the Whills surrounded by the crystals his entire life, breathing in the steam rising from the pools in the depths of the caves, spending his time curled into corners, watching the kyber worms in their webs, it never seemed like anything that could possibly be true. Visions, after all, had never come to him. Nothing in the cave had been the slightest bit menacing except for when the rains would come, filling the pools, turning the normally steady floor into a danger zone where nothing was completely known anymore, no matter how many times his feet had mapped out the ground. None of that, of course, was the fault of the kyber, simply the way that water worked, simply a side effect of the tumult that would occasionally come during the rainy seasons.

But, now, slipping further and further into a darkness that screams and writhes like the moon come to life around him, Chirrut can understand why people would express reservation about descending into kyber caves, why they might believe them rife with visions and ghosts and all sorts of bad portents. It is almost like the stone walls around him are breathing, and he does not give in to the fascination, does not press his hands against the rock to see if it moves under his touch. Instead, he continues walking, feet scrabbling on the loose rocks, unsure of his footing for what might be the first time in his life, while his mind reaches into the Force, looking, looking for a heart that has to be here.

If it is not here, all is lost, Chirrut thinks. Where else can they find a heart for the Force creation of Jedha if not on Jedha itself? He does not know if there are other kyber caves on the moon, has never been further away from NiJedha, from the temple, then this outpost in the wastes. He knows that there are other settlements, small, camps in the sands, camps in the other caves in the wastes, but he knows little of them. The sand folk are solitary, wary of NiJedha, wary of the temple. Most of them carry their own beliefs with them packed on their backs like provisions, most of them if they believe in the Force trust in it in a way that does not ascribe to either the teachings of the Whills or the Jedi.

That is fine, he knows. The Force comes to everyone in its own way.

But it makes it difficult to know how far he might have to go if his goal is not here. It makes it difficult to know how much longer, how much more of this he might need to endure, this search to create something, this quest that he feels honor bound to. He could quit, he knows. He could return to the temple of the Whills and tell them that he made a mistake, he was wrong in his idea, in what Master Adair was trying to impart to him with the book. That it was not a signal for him to do something so much as it was a request for him to hide something, but Chirrut has always been bad at admitting that he might be wrong about something. One of his flaws, he knows.

Besides, he doesn’t think that he’s wrong. He doesn’t think that he’s wrong at all.

Chirrut’s focus has slowly shifted from his surroundings to his thoughts as he delves further into the cave, exploring tunnels that he has not stepped foot in before, the cacophony of the crystals around him rising, though he is not paying much attention to them. Maybe it is because he is distracted that his foot slips on the path. Maybe it is because he is not paying attention to where he is going that he slides down the slick tunnel on his back, staff knocked from his hand and spinning into a corner. Maybe it is because of these things that he ends up in the small cavern in what feels like pitch darkness, gasping, knocked off center and seemingly lost in a way that has become more and more familiar to him over the past month.

Or maybe it is fate.

Whatever it is, it is heavy, and it seems to rest on his chest like a weight, a stack of rocks that have been added to with every passing day. It is Master Adair’s death, it is the attack on the temple, it is the archive left in ruins without even one consideration taken that it might have meant something to someone, it is the fate of the Jedi similar and yet strikingly different and worse than their own. It is being alone, bereft, on his back in the dark in the stomach of a kyber mine that chitters and laughs around him like he is nothing to it, like he will never be anything to it. It is the causal almost dismissive reaction the Force has given to all of this since it began. It is a line of slights that just seems to be getting longer with each passing moment, and Chirrut is furious at it. He is furious at all of it.

Mastery of the self is the way of the Whills. Disconnecting from emotional attachments, being wary about where those emotions could lead you is the way of the Jedi. The Whills has never condemned emotion, but they have recommended utilizing logic instead of base feeling, of processing through what one feels to ensure it is the right course of action before just acting on it. They suggest restraint, consideration instead of just blatantly chopping it off at the quick. Attachments, emotion can make one stronger, the Whills knows, the Whills says, but within reason. Following emotion can be like launching a ship in a squall; it can capsize you, drag you down, drown you.

Chirrut has felt like he has been drowning since they saw the smoke plumes rise over NiJedha, and he is tired of not fighting against the waves. Struggling to his feet is difficult because this far down the cave floor is slick with condescension, covered with pebbles, and thick with strange moss and lichens that manage to survive with only the slightly feeble, waning light from the kyber. The crystals have always helped life to thrive, he knows, but he forgets that fact in the face of his anger, wraps his hand around a fistful of moss-coated stones and hurls them at the pulsing walls with their veins of kyber, which seem to shift as though laughing at him. “What do you want from me? What more could you possibly want?” His words are too loud, shrill, his voice cracks, and it echoes back to him from everywhere because the space is very small, and there is nowhere for his rage to escape. It is just magnified tenfold. It should be enough to stagger him. It could be enough to send him pitching to the ground, but it is not. He stands, hands balled into fists at his side, attempting to stare down the world that surrounds him, trying to shame the very Force that exists in everything for letting all of this happen, for putting it on him to solve.

The Force, as ever, as always, is silent around him, though he can feel it, wondering, lingering, thick fingers in everything, of everything, wound close to him but not close enough to provide any comfort. Just another weight. Just one more responsibility. Chirrut imagines how it could have been better if he had never known it, never woken with it wrapped like twine around his fingers, like a pet following in his footsteps.

He twists his fingers into his hair, still long by temple standards but he doesn’t care, and tugs at it. “Nothing then? Or everything? Haven’t you already taken almost everything?” Even as the accusation leaves his mouth, he knows that it’s not true, but he doesn’t want to take it back. The Force has left him with quite a lot, but he is not ready to be grateful.

“I’m tired.” His voice breaks again, thick with sorrow this time instead of anger. “I am tired, and I am alone.”

The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force. The phrase rises unbidden in his mind, and he laughs, short, sharp, with no humor at all. All it does is pull more sadness from inside of him, all it does is push at the dam in his eyes that has been holding tears back until it breaks, until he is standing in the darkness, surrounded by it, entombed by it, weeping openly. His knees give, sending him crashing onto the ground once again, face covered by his hands, still crying like he is trying to quench the thirst of the desert all on his own. Isn’t he? Isn’t that exactly the sort of fruitless endeavor that he might find himself engaged in?

Chirrut can feel it, pressing in, lingering around, not foreboding but present and integral. Engrained in everything, and he should be mad at it, but cannot get back to the place where his anger sits. It is a flame snuffed out by his own tears, and he does not know how to rekindle it. All he can do is sit there, sobbing, as it drifts closer, wrapping around him but not oppressive. There. Always there but just out of reach. “Would it kill you,” he manages to force out of his throat, tight with the emotion spilling out of him, watery and misery logged, “to acknowledge me?”

Never, the voice sounds like mountains moving, shifting, learning to pull themselves away from the firmament to stand, giants made of towering, sentient rock, the voice sounds like Jedha creating a mouth for herself in the belly of the moon. Never left alone. Chirrut.

He weeps. It touches him. He thinks it touches him, but it is hard to say because he doesn’t truly know what it is, if it is the Force, if it is something other than the Force, born of it, leapt from it, having pulled itself away by sheer willpower. So much time spent studying the Force, and it largely remains a mystery in how it works, in what it is capable of doing, what lengths it can go to. And whoever would have spent time wondering whether it could reach out and touch a grieving man anyway. But he thinks it touches him, a ghost touch, lingering and cold on the back of his neck, soothing, calm fingers that brush his skin and into his hair, a caress.

He thinks it touches him. Or he wishes for it so hard that he makes the touch manifest itself out of nothing, out of nowhere. Does it matter what the truth is? Does it matter which is real? Isn’t everything real in the Force?

All Chirrut knows is that one moment he is crying into his hands, lost and broken, utterly alone, feeling forgotten and small in the darkness of the wild kyber cave where nothing seems to know he exists, where nothing seems to care for him, and then there is a presence. Then there is a voice and a maybe touch and a feeling that he does matter, that it does matter. Maybe it is just in his head. Maybe it is just a trick of his brain. Or maybe it is some strange quickening in the Force itself. Whatever it is, it calms him. It helps the tears dry up, and allows him to get his breathing back under control, pull himself together, though slower than he would like to admit, until he is almost himself again.

Which is when he sees it, sputtering light like the embers of a fire going out, a chunk of kyber slightly bigger than his hand. When he closes his fingers around it, it blazes to life, illuminates the space that he has fallen into, brightens every corner, and he can see that there is nothing with him except rocks and dust and the strange vegetation that grows in kyber light. There is nothing here to have spoken to him, to have touched him, except the crystals, except the Force.

“Will you beat for us?” he asks the kyber chunk in his hand. It is not pure crystal. It is a chunk of Jedha rock with crystal seams that blaze so brightly. He has rarely seen unaltered, uncut and unpolished kyber look like this does. Chirrut came to the caves to seek a heart. “Will you beat for me?”

And it does. Without a body, without the prayers, without more than the touch of his hand and a single, solitary question; it beats. It beats, and it glows, and it leads him up, out of the darkness.

He finds his staff along the way and emerges from the cave a bruised mess, face dirty and tear-stained, hands caked in mud and full of this chunk of kyber that seemingly will not dim and burns faintly like a coal, though not hot enough to injure him. His robes are torn in several places, and his hair is tangled. Finally, Chirrut thinks, as he steps out into the air of the wastes, the wind brushing sand across his face, he looks how he feels, battered, fallen, no longer the jewel of the temple, just a man trying his hardest and doing what has been set before him. When Kai turns at the sound of his steps, she looks at him, finally, like he is someone with a purpose, and they share a small grin, though it fades once her eyes fall on the rock in his hand.

“Almost time for a parting, then,” she says, no question in her voice,

Chirrut nods. “Almost.”

“This time, we’ll have a feast. Send you back proper. You never got one to acknowledge the end of your novice hood.”

He wants to tell her not to bother, that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t need it, but the look in Kai’s eyes stops him because it shows that maybe she needs it. Chirrut will not take that from her. They have all lost so much, most of them more than they will ever tell him, and he is not going to be part of the taking anymore if he can help it.

 

Before he goes, before he walks back into the sands to pick his way to NiJedha, a thing that he has never done on his own but he knows the way, and he trusts in his abilities to see him safely back to the temple, they say their goodbyes, the waste Guardians and him while the wind whips sand around their faces. Nabeam and SoSo are in their full Guardian regale, looking as close to proper and perfect as any member of the Whills before a high festival day, and Kai, he is shocked to note, has tied a stripe of red fabric around her wrist, a nod to the colors that she does not wear anymore, a compromise for this moment, for him. Perhaps one day she will tell him more about what has happened, the fissure that opened between her and the temple, between her and the Force, but today is not that day, and it is not his story to pry into.

SoSo, as the highest ranked, as their leader, steps forward first, and Chirrut bows. “Guardian Rook, thank you for allowing me to learn from you. Thank you for taking me in. May the Force be with you.” When he straightens up, she looks pleased.

“You’re always welcome here, Imwe. You’re always free to visit. Most of those in the temple think that their reach falls off the side of the mesa, doesn’t extend into the sands, but it does. You can always find us here at the edge if you have need.” She places a hand on his shoulder. “It was an honor to guide you through your novice hood. You have made us proud.” There is nothing in her words to suggest that she is lying or that she is disappointed with him, and he thinks of her in the kitchens, working, cooking, helping in any way she could even if more direct action was beyond her in that moment.

“Thank you,” he says again in sand language, and she nods.

“May the Force be with you, Guardian Imwe.”

Hands folded into her sleeves, SoSo steps back, allows Nabeam to stride forward, grinning brightly, though the light in his eyes has never been the same since the smoke, since the arrival of the Empire. Chirrut wonders if it ever will be again, and understands that while wounds can close they might not heal fully. Nabeam might not heal fully. “Chirrut,” Nabeam speaks first but leaves it at just his name, smiling, and Chirrut thinks he must know how it feels to call this man uncle or brother or son, like a lantern glowing, like a hand always extended.

He bows. “Guardian Rook, thank you for bringing me across the sands, for tending to me and helping me grow. Thank you for all of your guidance and your care. Maybe the Force be with you.”

Nabeam pulls him into a hug, unexpected, but Chirrut’s arms don’t miss a beat, encircle the older man as surely as if this was a common occurrence instead of something he has very rarely experienced. “Do me one favor, Chirrut.”

Chirrut nods into Nabeam’s shoulder, agreeing before the request has even been fully uttered and not regretting it because this is Nebeam, nothing he can possibly ask of him will be a burden.

“Keep the memory of Master Adair alive and well. I would be very grateful to you and so would they.”

Tears prick at his eyes, but he manages to blink them away. This is the closest the wastes might have ever come to hosting a formal ceremony, and Chirrut will not be the one to ruin that by letting himself be swept into sentimentality even if he wants to submit to it, even though he can feel the way that kyber heart in his bag seems to shift and sigh at the idea of it. Or maybe he is just imagining that the heart reacts. He doesn’t know. It has been a strange thing to have near him, the way it burns, the way it beats, especially when he traces his fingers across it, mapping the seams of crystal, like it knows him, like it reacts to him alone.

He shakes his head, forces his thoughts away from the heart because there will be time for that soon enough, focuses back on Nebeam who still holds him tight, tight like a father might in another world where Chirrut knew one. “I will, Nebeam. I promise.” In the hall, in the caves, in the archive, Chirrut will keep the spirit of Master Adair alive. Even if it means submitting to becoming archive master. Even if it means relinquishing some of his own goals for the betterment of others. Being a Guardian means putting others first, after all. We are the foundation.

Nebeam pats him one last time on the back before letting go, stepping back, stepping away, and Chirrut didn’t realize how cold it is, how biting the wind in the wastes is until it was blocked from him, and he shivers involuntarily. “Good man,” Nebeam says, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that is fond instead of being cocksure or pompous as it so easily could be seen on someone else.

That, of course, leaves Kai who saunters over to him like this is nothing special, like this is just any other day, like that bit of red cloth is not around her wrist like some kind of declaration. Chirrut is tempted to tease her about it, but this is not the time. This is a serious moment. So he bows. “Thank you for never letting me off the hook, Guardian Kai.” He has never called her that, never been brave enough to string the words together for fear of her reaction. He looks up before he continues. “The Force is with you.”

Kai just puts her hand on his shoulder, and it’s the one with the red on it. It blazes against her skin, bright, it looks right there. “You are meant for something special, Guardian Imwe. Never forget that.” Then she steps back to join SoSo and Nebeam where they stand.

Chirrut regards them for a moment, wonders if he will ever see them again, where Treme and the nameless man have gone, what will become of the Guardians of the waste now. He knows they don’t need him. They have gotten along quite well on their own before he ever came, but it still seems odd to part from them after being here for so long. He feels closer to them than he ever became with most of the people at the temple. Maybe it was just proximity, he thinks and then raises his fist to strike against his chest twice, a motion that they echo, before he turns and walks away into the sand.

The temple awaits him. The bits and pieces that will become the Force creation await him. And the heart he carries in the bag on his back stutters and starts, the beating audible in his ears, vibrating through his body even though he knows that he should not be able to hear it, should not be able to feel it at all. Never alone, he thinks as he picks his way through the shifting sand, repeating the rock worn words he heard in the cave. Never alone.

 

The work of putting the creation together begins promptly once he returns, and Chirrut learns, quicker than he would like, that he is not a sculptor, that reading a thing, storing the information in his mind and his heart such that he could repeat it back word for word does not make him proficient at the thing itself. The clay of Jedha is hard and course, full of sand as much as it is bits of kyber. It does not like to hold together without a lot of bargaining and trying again. It is endlessly frustrating, and Chirrut wishes he had never known about this idea at all, though he does not wish that he never had the book, would not want it in the hands of the Empire, simply wishes that it had never been written, never created, never dreamed.

After several failed attempts at limbs, he leaves that work to the artisan masters who have long since figured out the exact ratio of water and sand to clay in order to create something that does not crumble the moment it starts to dry. Instead, he works on the organs that will be placed inside the chest cavity, all connected to that bright and beating kyber heart that he keeps stored in a satchel at his waist, never letting it out of his sight and never showing it to anyone else, not even Master Wren. When he had returned, bruised and battered by the voyage on his own across the wastes, dehydrated and tired, he had stopped in the doorway of the council room to nod at her and tell her, “It is done,” before crawling back down flights of stairs for a shower and a long rest. Chirrut does not understand it, but it feels like the heart is something meant for him to see alone, and none of the others ask about it anyway, as though their tongues are frozen, made of stone and clay as much as any of the pieces that they sculpt.

He understands. Part of him anyway. The part that worries with each passing day that they are getting too close to Jedi tricks now, working themselves further and further away from the dictates of the Whills. But the other, larger parts of him cannot comprehend how everyone who knows about the creation are not curious to see it, are not thrilled with the idea of what they are doing, how it might change things, how it might help them. Or how it might fail. Be nothing but a lump of clay in the kyber caves, slowly being eroded down by the water and the rains when the stormy season returns.

Chirrut still has not decided whether failure or success would be the better outcome.

At night, when the artisan masters have retired, he makes the organs. It is quiet in the caves, full of nothing other than the soft sounds of water, the singing of the crystal, and the light of the kyber and its worms. And the heart, which sings and stutters, beats and beats like it will never tire, like it will continue forever, as long as they have need of it. Chirrut takes it from the satchel at his waist to settle it near the bits of the Force creation, make sure that both pieces know the other before they are joined. He doesn’t understand why he does it, why he needs to, but it feels integral.

They have made feet, sturdy, large to stride across the ground of Jedha, to shake it, and strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. Chirrut knows that under the clay are bones crafted from branches pulled from the trees in the temple garden, full of strength but also slightly pliant so they will bend instead of snap to pieces. The legs are similarly crafted, also thick, muscled in a way that is not the lean, fine lines of his own body but built more for power, for endurance, and for carrying. This body is meant to carry things: weapons, people, supplies, burdens, the temple. The Force itself. Hope.

Chirrut knows that hope can be a weighty thing, remembers the bruises along his arm from storing the book in his sleeve pocket for so long, how it changed the way he moved, how it made his shoulders ache. And he was only carrying such a little bit of hope. Will the amount they mean to give this creation be too much for it, he wonders? Will they burn it out before it can even properly rise and show the Empire what the Whills are capable of, why they should let them alone, why they are formidable?

“Do we ask too much of you?” he asks the legs of the creation, he asks the clay and the sand and the kyber bits, the carefully cut pieces of glass that have been made for the toenails, the strands of yarn threaded in for leg hair because the text said to make the creation in the perfect image of what they wanted, and the artisans are sparing nothing, the artisans are giving it everything, making it look so much like a man that Chirrut wonders whether they will be unable to pick it out of a crowd once it is completed.

His hands are dirty, heavy, covered in the thick mud paste he is using to craft the organs, each one made from pieces of the book about Force creations because the text needs to be safe, and this is the safest place he can think to put it, buried deep down inside of the creation itself, use the words to hold its life together in more ways than one. Perhaps, one day, if it is safe again, if the threat of the Empire wanes, Chirrut can write a new book detailing how to make a Force creation, utilizing his own experiences with it. If it doesn’t work, then there was never any need for the text in the first place.

His hands are heavy; it feels like the weight of the world, of Jedha, has been draped onto each finger. The demands placed on the Force creation, he knows, will be even greater. “Are we asking too much of you?” he wonders aloud again, looking at the heart this time, which glitters and beats and sings in a way that never coalesces with the song of the kyber in the cave itself, as though it exists outside of it, as though it is its own.

If the heart answers, he cannot hear it, not in words. He just feels the warmth, the shift of the Force around him, though there is no shadow lingering anymore. This Chirrut doesn’t completely understand because that shape in the Force has always been with him but now despite what it conveyed in the wild cave it seems to have slid away, back, retreated from him. He doesn’t know if it will come back. He still does not know what it is about, what its purpose is, why it chose him in the first place. If he has somehow managed to do something to offend it.

When he brushes his thumb over the heart, he leaves a print in mud on it, but it still glows, still beats, even seems to pulse brighter at the contact. Almost like it knows him. Almost like it likes him.

“Just keep beating.” It is a lot to ask. He knows it is a lot to ask, but if he must continue forward, one task at a time, the foundation of Jedha, he would like to know that he is not doing it alone. “Please. Just keep beating for me.”

It beats. All through the night, while Chirrut carefully creates each organ to be nestled into the cavity of the broad chest, which is open, incomplete, waiting, it beats. He twines fine string through his fingers and then wraps it in paper and the clay water mixture to make the lungs, and it beats. He shapes the stomach, lined in the words that he spent so long memorizing, and it beats.

When he falls asleep from exhaustion, only hours before the Jedhan sun will rise and the artisans will return, his head pillowed on the clay shoulder that seems broad enough to lift the mountains from the moon, it beats in its place in the satchel at his waist, almost seeming to match its beats to his breathing, to his own heart, but this fact is one that he realizes on the edge of sleep when nothing seems real or of any consequence and he forgets it on waking.

 

It takes longer to make a man out of clay than Chirrut would have guessed when he first poured over the pages of the book in the wastes, at night when the others were sleeping. It especially takes longer when some attempts fail, when the clay is too weak and will not hold, when the sand makes it too brittle, when the branches are just not right to create the cage of ribs to hold his carefully crafted organs in safely. Eventually, the artisans craft those bones from bits of fine, light metal, each one wrapped in gauze to soften their harshness. Chirrut still has not learned the finer points of sculpting so they will not let him help with the face, which seems to take ages as they pour all of their attention into it. The Whills should have more statues, he thinks, as he watches them work, completely immersed. The Whills should have more vases. He tries to remember to tell Master Wren that the artisans need more to do, more ways in which to let their talents sing.

They let him pick out the bits of glass, brown and strangely wet looking, that they sink into the face to make the eyes, and Chirrut’s hands are the ones that loop wet ribbon and the last pages of the text, torn into stripes, together to form the whorls of the brain. While the sculptors work on ears that Chirrut thinks are oddly large, though he remembers that this is seen as a blessing, as a mark of luck for some of the cultures on Jedha, he is allowed to thread the hair into the scalp. There is a lot of hair, woven together from a collection of handspun fibers, full of dark brown and black and bits of causal gray, and he takes the time to painstakingly place each one and then separate the fibers for a wild look. Some he braids together when he has nothing else to do with his hands because he does not leave the creation alone with the sculptors, does not leave its side, cannot when it is so full of precious secrets and that bright, beating kyber heart that he worries will stutter to a stop if he is not present. (They bring him his meals here, and a small traveling lavatory has been set up in the depths of the cave. Chirrut is starting to wonder how he will ever adjust to a life not lived among the kyber worms, in the warm and damp, which is comfortable and safe, and without the creation at his side with its softly, ever beating heart that has become so much more than just a sound, just a feeling in the Force.)

When it is finally done, it is beautiful. It is more lovely than anything Chirrut ever thought could be created from clay by the hands of many men, by his own hands in some ways, though he knows his contributions are far from the best ones. Still, he cannot help but feel some strange prickings of pride when he looks at the creation on its pallets. It is tall and broad. It looks like it could carry their moon physically across the stars on its back even if its hands are barely larger than his own, even if the fingers seem slightly soft when he runs his own along them, careful not to wipe clean the work that has gone into the knuckles or dislodge the shells fitted in for the nails. He thinks about the thin threads woven into the body to simulate the blood vessels, all of them wound round the heart and the lungs, a careful puzzle he did at night, placing all of the organs into the chest cavity once they had figured out the problem with the ribs. It was a long night spent wrapping thread and maneuvering all the organs. Chirrut put the heart in last, and if it seemed to wink at him, flashing brilliantly once before dimming back to its normal glow it must have surely been the lack of sleep that made him see it, before he carefully, carefully closed the chest flap, using a concoction of mud and water to seal the seam the way the artisans taught him.

It is, he realizes, an intense labor that they have undertaken here, and maybe they have put too work into this creature. Especially if it fails.

It is a thought that runs cold down his back like the whisper of the wind from beyond the mesa. What will they do if this fails? Where will their hope be hung if not on the back and from the ears of this great, clay man whose chest does not yet rise and fall with breath, whose limbs do not yet move, through the heart beats, strangely, murky, the sound sunken and dulled by the layers of clay and string and metal but ever present in Chirrut’s ears and mind despite these facts. He thinks that he will hear it always, that it is trapped inside his own body the way the knowledge of how to build the creature itself is, that it will never fade from him and this is comforting in a way that he supposes it should not be but that he allows because he is too tired to fight it, too tired to pull away from some kind of connection when the universe seems to have a vested interest in destroying all of the ties that he makes.

 

The night before the ceremony he runs a finger lightly over the planes of the clay man’s face, which has been lovingly, painstakingly wrought, which is far lovelier than it has any reason to be, any need to be, but he wouldn’t have it any other way now that he has seen it. “I wish I could have crafted you, but my hands are not so clever. You’ll just have to be suited with the gits I could fashion. Everything inside your chest has touched my hands.”

He sighs and curls his fingers into the hair for a moment before brushing it back into place and laying down on his mat on the floor right next to the clay man where he has slept throughout this entire process. “What am I doing? You can’t answer me. You don’t know I’m here. Even if you did, what would you think? Will you think? Will you move?”

The idea of what will happen next, how this will happen has always been so far removed from what he knows, from what is happening. It has been a far-off dream that he never actually thought would come, but now the reality of all of this is happening tomorrow night. It is startlingly. It is real. As real as the clay and the glass and the shells. It is solid under his fingers, and Chirrut is not sure whether or not he is ready to find out if this will become as real as he is himself or if it will just crumble to dust, ebb away little by little as water runs over it, return to the moon that it is carved from.

What will he do if it leaves him instead of joins him? What will he do if this is just one long drawn out failure?

What will he do, alone? Chirrut has not thought this far ahead, has not plotted any course for himself save for the completion of this project, and that lack of foresight is now beating down on him from the dark. As a child, he always knew what he was meant for. He was going to be a Guardian. He was going to protect the temple. Now he is doing that, but he knows nothing else. There is no Master Adair to help him. There is no Obi-Wan to pine after. There are only the masters and guardians he has known his whole life who have tried to guide him, and his peers who, even now, seek to somehow divorce themselves from him because he remains too strange, too full of the Force.

So full of the Force that he has embarked on a secret mission that means he lives in the depths of the kyber caves. Why would anyone want to associate with him now?

Part of him thinks that he has SoSo, Nabeam, and Kai, but they live in the wastes, far removed from the burden of the temple. Chirrut cannot seek that lifestyle. The very idea of it, of divesting himself from the rest of the Whills for the remainder of his life is too much. There is still the archive to set to rights. Master Adair would want him to see to that. Master Adair would want him to see to a lot of things.

“In the wild cave,” he talks to the clay man as if it could answer him back, as if he expects it to rise and share his company, to be his friend, “the Force said I would not be alone. I would never be alone, but that is not what it feels like. It feels like I am never anything but alone. Even with the Force near me. It feels like the Force keeps everyone else away from me. Or takes them away once I have found them.”

He looks over at the face of the clay man, quiet, reposed, not moving, and it is the loveliest face he has seen. “Will you keep me company? When we breathe life into you, when you move for us, will you be my friend?”

It is beneath him to ask these things of it. It is meant to be for the temple, it is meant to protect them from the Empire, to be a sign of their resilience and their power. This quest, which has been on for the better part of his life it seems if he examines all of the pieces closely, is not about making him feel less alone; it is about doing what is best for the Whills, for Jedha.

Others before self, they are taught, and Chirrut knows it is selfish, but he is only human, and he is still young; he is selfish more than he would like. He places his hand over the creature’s, thinks about the small wood bones, how they are almost the same size, how the clay is strangely warm to the touch as though all the kyber dotted through its body fuels the heat. “No. I will be your friend. You will not be alone because I will be there. You will be there for the temple, I will be there for you.”

It does not strike him how close those words are to a vow even as his eyes flutter shut, and he falls into a deep, peaceful sleep, fingers still resting on the clay man’s hand.

 

The text was not clear about the ceremony itself so Chirrut improvises in a lot of ways, taking existing bits of Whills traditions along with vague suggestions from the book in an attempt to piece them together into something meaningful, something that will have enough flash and circumstance for the rest of the temple elders to believe in it. He does not understand why it feels so integral to him for them to believe in it, but it does. It feels like the most important thing in the universe as he sits on an outcropping of rock in the kyber cave and twists his hands together, nervous. When Master Wren asked him about the particulars for the ceremony, he just gave her a list of common items without thinking, panicking quietly because all the book said, all it decreed was to “Breathe life into the creation” and wait.

Breathe life into the creation and wait. It is too simple, and yet too complex all at once, but he knows that he didn’t misread it, isn’t misremembering it, because he read those words over again as he shaped the tongue, slipping the last bit of the book into the piece of clay before fixing it into the mouth, between the perfect bits of stone carved into teeth. Breathe life into the creation. Short. Simple. As though all of these things should just fall into place, easy, one two three. Like the Force should be leading him.

Only he’s not sure whether it feels like that anymore. Chirrut is having a hard time feeling anything other than the growing ball of nerves in his stomach, the half sick conviction that he is going to fail at this task, that he has wasted the temple’s resources, that this has been for nothing. That they will have nothing to protect them when the Empire comes again. That they will fall like the Jedi. Like Obi-Wan. Like Master Adair.

He is dressed in the fancy Guardian robes, the ones only meant for high ceremonies, though he has gotten the hem dirty already because of all the mud and dust and sand on the ground. And he feels two seconds away from tears or storming off into the darkness of the caves to be alone at every moment. No matter how much he tries to control his breathing, to calm his head, mind over body, mastery of the body like he has spent his whole life learning, it does not seem to help. His hands shake, and his palms sweat, and his mind races. More than anything, he just wants it to be over, wants to press his lips against those of the creation and breathe, and for it to wake. Or not. Then he can turn this page. Then he can do something else even if he has not quite figured out what that something will be.

“Guardian Imwe, is everything prepared to the correct specifications?”

Taking a breath, he stands and turns to face the elder Guardian whose name he thinks is Joyt.

Guardian Joyt, who is good with a bow, good with a blaster, and has a prosthetic leg that sticks when the sand gets into the joints. Guardian Joyt who does not look judgemental, hands folded in the sleeves of her robes, hair shaved close to her scalp, and her head not bowed, bright green eyes on him. Guardian Joyt who, Chirrut realizes, is looking at him like an equal, not like he is some green member of the Whills who does not know what he is doing, but like a Guardian who has earned his place, earned her respect. It is a farce, and he is terribly afraid that it will all fall down if he breathes on it too hard but that will not happen here, not now. There is a ceremony to perform, there is a creation to raise, and he can feel its heart beating, almost see the glow of it flicker in time behind his eyelids every time he blinks.

“Yes, Guardian Joyt, everything is in place. Please inform Master Wren that we await the arrival of the elders. Then the ceremony can begin.” Then they will discover whether he has failed them all, whether he can live up to the expectations passed down to him by Master Adair. Then he can move forward or fall into nothingness, no longer a golden child of the Force, but just another guardian for the gates. He could be okay with that. After all this time running after something he isn’t sure he can ever catch, Chirrut thinks standing at the gates would be a reprieve, a rest.

With a nod, Guardian Joyt exits the area, and he can hear the sound of her footsteps as she treks across the cave and up the stairs to fetch the masters and guardians likely already waiting on the other side of the main entrance door. Chirrut’s hands are shaking, and his heart is pounding furiously in a way that seems to indicate it will not be tamed, it will not still no matter how many deep breaths he takes or how much he wills it to. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had requested the presence of the waste Guardians, somehow managed to fit them into all of this, indicated that he needed them, told them about his plan at all, but part of it was that he knew it would be a hard sell to Master Wren and part of it was because he was concerned that they might talk him out of the plan altogether, especially Kai. Of them all, Chirrut knows that Kai would be the one to let him know exactly how much she dislikes the idea of mucking about with the Force in this way. And yet. And yet she was the one who said she knew he would accomplish great things, she was the one telling him that the Whills were always changing so perhaps she would have understood if he would have explained. There is no way of knowing now. It is too late. It is almost completed. Chirrut knows, without anyone even mentioning it to him, that there will be no second chance. It’s fine, though, because he wouldn’t want another one anyway. This one feels like it has wrung years out of his soul; he is ready for this to end, for a break before the next battle.

In the couple of moments that he has before the door opens and the elders will expect him to begin the ceremony, Chirrut allows himself to stand there, hands open at his sides and slightly extended, eyes closed, just breathing, just reaching into the Force to see if it will reach back. It does not. It flows around him, a never-ending stream, an undulating current that goes through everything, but it does not react to him, not the way that it has done before in certain situations. It certainly does not seek him out to console him or communicate with him, just exists, just sings and slips and meanders through everything, though it is still somewhat sedate, listless, the way that it has been ever since the arrival of the Empire, and Chirrut wonders how much this has to do with the loss of the Jedi. Has the sudden loss of their cousins somehow resulted in a depletion of the energy of the Force? Does it work that way? The Force works in mysterious ways, he knows, ways that have not fully been mapped out, cannot quite be understood until one leaves this plane of existence to rejoin the energy of the Force, but he wishes he could understand it better. For all that he can hear it, for all that he can sense it, Chirrut has never really understood it. That fact has rarely bothered him as much as it does these days.

He doesn’t have any more time to ponder on the Force, the lack in it, the absence of something that has become known and welcome because he can hear the doors open and the sound of many feet working their way down the stairs. The ceremony, the one that he has cobbled together from all the other Whills ceremonies and from the thoughts that drift through his mind about how one asks a universal Force for something, is about to begin. There is no more time for doubt. He is the champion of hope here. He needs to act like it. He needs to pass that hope along to its rightful bearer, and pray that it can stand under the weight.

“Master Wren,” he greets, bowing his head, as he moves to intercept the elders. All things considered, it is a small gathering for a temple ceremony, twenty of them in all, but he knows this is something that needs to be kept closely guarded, at least until they figure out whether or not it will work. If it does, if the clay man rises, if the creation stands and comes to life, then they will need to find the words to explain it to the rest of the temple, to the denizens of NiJedha outside the walls. And they will need to find the proper way to announce its arrival across the stars so that the news sends a bolt of fear down the backs of their enemies and cements the fact that the Whills will not lie down and die, that they are capable of protecting themselves and their people. All of that is later. The breathing bit is now.

Candles have been placed around the pallets on which the creation is displayed, covered in more ceremonial robes and bits of cloth, draped in pieces and baubles that have meaning for the various cultures that span Jedha, to give it a bit of something from everything it is meant to protect. This was not in the book, but Chirrut could think of no other way to try and explain that it is meant to guard them all, an entire moon, not just the temple itself, not just the Whills, but something larger, something more. There is no music save for the singing of the kyber crystals embedded in the walls of the cave around them, and the elders, themselves a motley collection of species and cultures, are quiet as they form a circle around the pallets, and it pains Chirrut to see that some of them cannot seem to make their eyes rest on the creation whose birth they have come to see.

Belief will make the creation rise. Belief will save them. Not just his, though. He doesn’t think his alone is strong enough. They need enough to weave a tapestry, they need a whole moon’s worth of belief, an entire universe’s hope passed from mouth to mouth in a gifted breath. Deep in that chest full of sand and clay and metal, he can hear the heart continue on in its slow and steady beating, not faltering or racing like his own, but a gentle reassuring sound that he latches onto as he steps forward to begin.

“May the Force be with us,” he says, the standard opening for all ceremonies. “May the will of the energy that flows through and into everything in the universe guide us and remind us of our course. We ask the Force to be with us here and now in our hour of need, when there is a darkness on the horizon, when our cousins have been struck, when we have been struck. We seek the Force to not only guide us but to lend us a hand. We are the Whills. We are the foundation of the voice of the Force. We have guided its seekers for millennia. We have provided a home for the homeless, faith for the broken, a balm for the wounded, a goal for the aimless, love for the unloved. We have accepted all children given. We have guarded. We have learned.”

His voice shakes, but he hopes that the others will think it is out of a rush of emotion and not from fear. “We ask you for a miracle more than the miracle of existence and your presence in the universe, which is with us every day. We ask for our faith made flesh in this,” he stumbles and nearly says man before making his lips form the word, “creation that we have prepared. We will gift it with our breath, and ask that you gift it with yours as well.”

Chirrut knows that Master Adair would criticize the lines for being complicated and stodgy, too flowery, too old, but he needs it to be fitting, he needs it to sound like something that might work, something that the elders gathered around him will believe in, put their faith in. Their faces are unreadable, though, so he does not know how well or poorly it has gone over. All he can do is gesture to the one nearest the clay man. “Please, brother, bless the creation with your breath.”

One after another, the elders bend and Chirrut can hear the audible exhale as they each blow their air into that perfectly formed mouth before they step off to the side to fold their hands in their sleeves and wait, pointedly not looking at anyone. He doesn’t know if it is enough, their seemingly half-hearted belief. The air around him feels full of acquiescence more than hope. He will have to have hope enough for all of them.

As the leader of the ceremony, he is the last to breathe, his is the closing, final act, and he makes a show out of kneeling in the mud next to the pallets, not caring whether it gets dirt all over his robes. When he leans forward, he places a hand reverently on the clay man’s cheek, and he opens his mouth wide, almost like a lover’s kiss, when he goes to bestow his own air into the clay chest, into those lungs he crafted himself. But he does not think of hope when his lips pass over the clay ones, nor does he think of the Force; he thinks how different these lips are from Obi-Wan’s, how much they lack, how much he misses the man even though he was barely there at all, how he barely knew him at all.

He breathes out, a string of regret, of loneliness and wanting and not nearly enough admiration, not nearly enough joy. Inside the chest, inside his mind, Chirrut can feel the heart stutter and slow as he rises to join the elders. He hopes, desperately, that it is shallower because now it is pumping the Force through the entire clay host instead of just the lump of rock and kyber. He needs it to be that instead of something else, something worse.

They are all silent for a beat until Master Wren clears her throat. “What happens now, Guardian Imwe?”

“Now?” he repeats, and then nods, slowly, solemnly, as though weighing all his words, as though weighing the entire universe carefully when he is actually just filled with a wave of unending panic. “Now we wait for the Force to answer.”

The elders nod. They are used to waiting for the Force. Waiting to hear the Force, waiting to feel the Force. Chirrut knows that most of these beings have spent their lives waiting for the Force in one way or another so more waiting, more patience is nothing out of ordinary to them. But for him, when the Force has always been right there, like a door that only needed to be opened, this is a crux, and he fears that he will be caught out as a failure.

What he does not want to do is stand in the middle of the kyber caves with this group of assorted elders for however long it takes before the creation stirs or they decide, once and for all, that this was a trivial thing, a mistake, or, worse, an ill-intended waste of their vital time and resources. There is already so much weight on him, Chirrut cannot fathom taking on a single ounce more. “Let us blow out the candles to bring the ceremony to its close,” he says, and he does, and they do.

And then they all bow to each other and to him and to the clay man on his pallets. They all murmur their parting words, a litany of, “May the Force be with you” chiming through the air, and then they leave him to stand watch and bring them word of what happens.

All that happens that night is Chirrut laying on his back next to the clay man’s pallet, gazing up at the ceiling, thinking about how Obi-Wan’s lips felt on his own until the blood sings hot through his veins, draws a reaction from his body that he does nothing about, simply denies until it goes away and he can shut his eyes. He dreams of hands, barely larger than his own, skating over his flesh, lips pressed against his in passion and want and need. Kisses planted against his throat and the inside of his thigh and his mouth, over and over, fingers swift across his legs and over his cock and up his back, drumming against his chest in rhythm with his heart. Chirrut keens and cries out, sated and satisfied and shaking, waking up soaking as if from fever to find he has made a mess of his pants and, no matter how much he tries, he cannot recall what the man in his dream looked like, just how he felt, and the amount of love for him that was evident in every motion.

On the pallet, the clay man does not stir, and the kyber heart remains weak, barely a background noise in his mind, as though it has broken.

 

Nothing happens.

Chirrut sits and watches and waits but nothing happens. The clay man does not stir; there is no shift in the fingers or toes, no rising of the chest as though it is breathing. All it does is lay there the same way it did when they were sculpting it, that faint fluttering heartbeat seeming to grow weaker, further away, and it takes everything inside of him to not hold his own breath until he passes out. It wouldn’t do any good even if it feels like it would be easier than waiting.

The artisans come and go the first couple of days, tending to the clay that they have labored over with such care. They do not speak of failure or success, all they talk about is the fine craftsmanship of the detailing, the shells for the nails and the glass in the eyes, the expert way that Chirrut has threaded the hair into the scalp, the braids he has woven. They speak like it is a masterpiece whether it moves or not, and Chirrut wishes he could feel that way, wishes he could just enjoy the thing in front of him for what it is, lovely and well-made, without the tug of regret and disappointment that it fills him with.

He should leave it. He should walk right out of the kyber caves and into his room, he should shower properly and sleep for at least a week and then decide how best to put his life together again now that something else has fallen away, slipped right through his fingers.

But he can’t. Because the heart, that kyber heart, crystal and rock and mud all wound round together, tied with bits of string passing through the monolith of metal and wood and clay and dust and kyber, beats. Faint. Like a baby bird held in the hand. But it beats. In his mind and behind his eyes it glows and stutters. So he stays.

He stays and watches the artisans, the careful way they mist the clay to keep it supple, to prevent it from drying out too quickly and cracking. They care for it, their creation, and he wonders if he should ask them to breathe into it, see if it would respond to the hands that made it beautiful rather than his hands and the hands of the elders, hands that mean to ask it to be a tool, something for the temple to use, like the droids in the library, like the gate around the temple.

 

The artisans do not come during the second week. Chirrut sits on the rocks and listens to the soft sounds of the water in the kyber pools, surrounded by the glow of the crystals and the webs from the kyber worms, and waits.

On its pallet, the clay man does nothing. Still. And its heart, like a sound from many rooms away, is soft, soft, far, far, and Chirrut does not know how to reach it. Neither does he know how, after all these days, to admit defeat. To stride upstairs with his unkempt hair, muddy and tangled and probably beyond salvaging, and his gaunt face, his thin frame, grown lean and almost sickly where once he was honed like a blade, all of that lost to the months spent in the caves putting this man together. For what? For nothing apparently.

How is he supposed to ascend to the elders and face them? How is he supposed to say that he has not only failed in the task he set out to accomplish but also destroyed a piece of Whills text in the same endeavor? If his eyes had not grown dry from tragedy already, he would weep. Now all he can do is sit here and watch and wait and wonder.

He mists the clay man when he thinks of it, though he cannot say why. He truly does not expect anything to come of it, to come from this experiment, this waste of time and resources and his hope. Chirrut is learning that hope is not an inexhaustible well; it has a bottom, and he keeps scraping his fingers across it until they are bloody looking for more. It’s like he cannot help himself, cannot stop himself.

Now when the heart beats, he wonders if it is tormenting him.

When he dreams, there is nothing. No form in the darkness. No odd moments of skin and lips brushing over him that seemed more real than reality itself. There is nothing. When he sleeps, it is like he slips into black, empty waters and then wakes to more nothingness.

“This must be what it is like,” he says to the cave, listens to the way his voice echoes and returns to him, twisted into something new, “to have lost the Force.” He thinks he understands Kai, out in the wastes, out in the wild, not listening, not heeding, but unable to leave, tied still to something, bleeding.

Chirrut does not want to bleed out until there is nothing left in him.

Standing, he strides over to the clay man and glares down at it. There is a crack that has formed across its cheek from drying out too quickly, and Chirrut was unable to repair the damage so he left it even though he knew that it would hurt the artisans to see. He left it, and it looks like an accusation against him now, a physical reminder of all the ways that he has failed since before this whole thing began.

He failed Master Adair by not noticing what they wanted, by not heeding their words. He failed the waste guardians by giving them nothing back. He failed the temple by leaving it in the first place and not being there to help protect it when the Empire came. He failed by not being there when his Force sense might have been able to serve as some kind of warning. He has failed them now, in letting them think that he could make them a weapon strong enough to keep the Empire away from them again, but only making them a clay man who will wash away if Chirrut pours enough water on him, wash away to leave behind bits of string, torn paper, shells, and glass, and a giant, marred chunk of kyber that beats like a heart.

That beats for him.

That lied to him.

Maybe he should be angry, but he is so tired. He is too tired to put more anger on his back, in his heart. Chirrut sinks to his knees next to the clay man and eases his fingers through the yarn of the hair, which is knotting because he has not been taking care of it properly. “I asked too much. I asked too much. I know. The Force is in all things. The Force is in everything. The Force is in life, but this is asking too much of it. This is a Jedi trick. We are not the Jedi. We do not use the Force in this way.”

“It was wrong of me to try and demand things of you. It was wrong of me to put so much on you.” He does not notice his own tears until they fall onto the glass of the clay man’s eyes, which already look so wet that the tears look more natural there than they probably do on Chirrut’s face. “You beat for me. I hear you. I hear you. Thank you for trying, but I think this might be too much.” The body is huge. The body is broad and heavy. The heart is strong, is kyber, but there is only so much he can expect of it, only so much he can ask. This body is too big for that chunk of kyber, too much for its light. It is settled in darkness much bigger than its ability to illuminate.

Chirrut places a hand on its chest, and he thinks he can feel it, the heart as it beats in the other universe of clay and metal and twine. It continues on where he falters, but it is unfair of him to expect so much of it. “I just.” More of his tears fall onto its face. “I don’t have anyone. I said I would be here for you, but all I did was ask things of you. I don’t know what I can do for you other than to let you go if that is what you need.”

He did not get to say goodbye to Master Adair.

And the goodbye he got from Obi-Wan was strange and unsatisfactory.

But he can say goodbye properly to the creation, to all of his hope that has been fitted into its chest and braided on its head. He can say goodbye to this chapter and then move on to the next. This will not be another thing that wakes him in the middle of the night with a feeling of being incomplete, a gaping, yawning hole. Like a book, he will close this one chapter.

Chirrut can think of no better way to close a chapter than the sunset prayer, though he finds it hard to get through with the sobs that begin to shake him the moment he starts to speak, and he is too emotionally wrought to sing them properly the way that they should sound. He does not think the clay man and the kyber heart will mind all that much, though.

“In darkness, cold. In light, cold. The old sun brings no heat. But there is heat in breath and life. In life, there is the Force. In the Force, there is life.” He bows his head over the creation’s face, his breath, his words blowing onto its lips, into its open mouth. “And the Force is eternal.” Briefly, Chirrut presses their foreheads together and then, hesitantly, shyly, the way he might bestow a first kiss on a lover, Chirrut slots his lips against the clay man’s and breathes out. This time, he does not think about Obi-Wan, he does not think about the man lost to him or the what if that he will never be able to answer. This time, he notices that the lips are soft and not wet, that they are not cold or clammy the way he would have thought. They are soft and slightly warm from the kyber dust embedded in the clay and they are, Force help him, inviting enough for him to let his tongue dart just past them, over the stone carved teeth, to touch the tongue he formed with his own two hands, the tongue with the last piece of the text folded into it.

When he pulls back, his own lips and tongue are gritty, taste of the Jedhan wind, full of sand, but spark like pressing kisses onto kyber crystals, a childhood dare that Chirrut made up for himself when no one else would play with him. “I release you if you have need of that. I hold you to nothing. You are free. May the Force be with you.”

It feels like a weight has been pulled from his chest with those words, it feels like the world has been lifted from his shoulders. Chirrut is tired, and Chirrut is done. Tomorrow, he can ascend from the kyber caves and start anew. Tomorrow, he can prove that he still belongs in the temple, among the Whills. He can begin to set the archive to rights. For now, though, he just wants to rest. It is awkward sleeping next to the clay man, but it is the best place in the caves. He settles his head onto its chest, where he can hear the heart still stuttering, far off and distant. For a moment, he thinks that it has gotten strong, bright somehow, but he pushes this aside as wishful thinking. He is too tired to dwell on it.

He closes his eyes. He descends.

In his dreams, someone runs their fingers through his hair. In his dreams, he can feel it, that bit of the Force that has always been his, the one that made him feel like he was not alone. Someone is touching his hair and stroking his cheek, and he is okay. Chirrut, mollified, comforted, lets go, slips further into the dream, and sees eyes that look wet and lips that taste of the wind when they press against his mouth.


	6. The Creation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More sexually explicit content begins in this chapter in the form of dreams and masturbation.

Awareness comes slowly like the fingers of the dawn creeping through the windows of the temple dormitories. Chirrut has slept hard and deep, which means that finding the waking world again is difficult, far more difficult than he would have expected. Following a night spent falling from one dream of fingers in his hair and kisses on his lips and an overwhelming, all-encompassing sense of belonging into just quiet, peaceful, thorough sleep, the sort of rest that has been hiding from him for so long, for years, clawing his way back up to the world of the waking is difficult. He thinks that he would rather stay submerged and not just in the blankness of utter slumber but in the dreams, too, the ones that make him feel seen and dear, enjoyed for who he is rather than for what he can do, what goal he can accomplish for a certain set of people. Chirrut loves the temple, and he loved Master Adair, but they have asked so much. They always have, and he has not always been able to give what they need, which has left him feeling so much like a failure, like a boy once made of gold whose shine has been stripped away to reveal that he is nothing special, after all. Just a chunk of worthless metal. 

In the darkness, something cares. In the deep cavern of his dream, someone touches him gently but insistently, and Chirrut likes that. Maybe more than he should, he likes that, even though he cannot tell who the hands belong to, even though there is no face or voice or identity that goes along with the feeling, he still likes it. He has dreamed of Obi-Wan before, aching, wanting, desperate things, but this is different. And he has had passing fantasies about other people, some he knows and some just cobbled together from bits of beings that please him, but all fleeting, faltering, and none of those dreams felt like this one.

The fingers on his cheek seem real. The fingers in his hair, snagging slightly in the knots and tangles that have been wrought by so much time spent in the caves, sulking and obsessive, feel like they are actually there, like they will remain when he wakes such that maybe he could follow them to an arm and a shoulder and a neck and a face. A face that he could press kisses to, lips that he could lick and suck, lips to open and allow his tongue inside to explore. He shifts, he mumbles, waking more with every moment, with every thought about what he could do, what he has not done before, not because he didn’t want but just for lack of opportunity. His hands over his own flesh have been fine, but it has lacked the intimacy, the knowledge of sharing the action with another. 

Chirrut has always wanted to touch and been stuck in a position where no one was really open to him touching them. Save for a few here and there, crushes that never went past kisses. And save for Obi-Wan. But that, too, was fleeting and brief, the opportunity for more forever dashed now. He will never know those lips again, but that does not mean he cannot know others. Even if they only exist in his dreams for now perhaps one day they will be made flesh, something he can reach, something that can reach him.

Something catches in his hair and pulls slightly, and the sensation is not just a dream sensation. It smashes the spun glass goblet of his dreaming, rips him back to reality, awake, startled, sleep-drunk and off-balance from the months spent without rigorous daily training. He is in no shape to fight now, though he instinctively pulls back from the perceived threat, hands raised, eyes wild, trying to find the figure in the gloom. 

What he sees is the Force creation. Hair an unkempt, wild tumble of braids and curls around his shoulders, dark eyes wet as though Chirrut’s tears lodged into the glass when they fell on it, and a scar marring the skin under its eye. From where the clay dried and cracked. From where Chirrut was careless, didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t keep it supple enough. Ruined it.

“Fuck,” the word is low, a gasp of air that rushes past his lips as he looks, as he realizes what he is seeing.

The Force creation with its skin the color of the Jedha mountains. The Force creation with its plush lips and large ears. It was beautiful as a sculpture. It was lovely as a work of art stretched out and unmoving on the pallets, lit by the flashing crystals in the walls and the gently blowing webs of the kyber worms. It was beautiful, then. It is unspeakably exquisite now, a thing to be worshipped, a thing to build altars to, and Chirrut once again thinks about how they need to find the temple artisans more to do.

And then it hits him as hard as a blow to the ribs during sparring when his attention would waver because he was Chirrut Imwe and who could ever touch him. Until they did. “Oh shit. It worked.” 

The creation tilts its head at him, its eyes watching his mouth, his face. Chirrut scrambles backward a little, hands and feet sliding in the mud, sending him crashing onto his ass in the dirt, ruining the robes even more than they already had been. He is filthy. He is caked in mud. Inside the creation’s chest, though, he can hear that heart, the one he carried, the one he found, singing to him like a clutch of birds in the temple garden, raising their voices to praise the Force that is in everything. It beats. Just as he asked it to do.

“It worked.” His voice breaks, and he is crying without realizing it. “It worked. It fucking worked. It worked.”

Chirrut is moving again, trying to clamber to his feet and failing because his legs are shaky, his entire body shot through with adrenaline. “I have to tell them. I have to tell them about this. About you. They’ll want to know.” He cannot find any purchase on the ground. 

Before he knows what is happening, there is a hand on his shoulder. It is not much larger than his own, finely formed, and it is warm. And it looks like skin. This makes him pause, and stop trying to unstick himself and his uncooperating limbs from the mud because it doesn’t look like clay anymore. It doesn’t look like sand and kyber mixed with water and spices from the marketplace. It doesn’t look like the broken bits of leaves and petals they used for fillers. No, it looks like skin, several shades darker than his own, ruddy and inviting, maybe soft. 

When he looks up, the creation is there, leaning forward, covered in a scrap of fabric from the waist down, but seemingly every bit as real as anyone that Chirrut has ever known. Even with the scars that litter his body. Ones that Chirrut knows from when they created him, formed him, pieced him together and opened the clay to put his organs in, as well as new ones, ones created by a lack of care, a lack of experience. In a way, they are all his fault. The most obvious one, of course, is the one jutting across the cheek, a proclamation of failure existing even though it should be a symbol of success. He did it, after all. It worked like he said it would, like he hoped it would.

His breath comes out in one long sigh, and part of him, the part of him full and drunk on the singing of that heart, wants to reach out and run his fingers over the scar, see if maybe he can rub it away, get the perfection back, but he cannot move. All he can do is look at it and watch it as it watches him. There is intelligence in its eyes. There is life. There is the Force in it, and Chirrut can feel it not just when he looks at it or reaches for it; it buzzes from its hand into his shoulder, through the layers of clothing, a roar that he isn’t sure will ever quiet until it has been let go to return to the clay that made it. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I,” his voice stutters out because what is he sorry for now? Everything? Nothing? The scar, the rush, the world? The truth in the universe at the moment, the reason he set out on this quest in the first place. “I think I’ve already wronged you, but thank you.”

The creation looks confused, and Chirrut isn’t sure whether it knows what he’s saying. He never thought about that part of it, how to make sure that the creation would understand them once it was awake. He just thought. He just thought it would be easy. Now he’s not sure what it will be, what any of it will be, how they will manage to tell it what they need from it. How they want it to die for them if necessary. Can it die? Is it alive? The Force is life. It is of the Force and in the Force. He can feel that as surely as he can feel his own heartbeat.

It touches his face, and those fingers are smooth and soft and gentle. They are warm. It reminds him of something.

It terrifies him. 

“I have to tell the elders!” Chirrut proclaims, scrambling, finally getting his feet under him and running full tilt for the stairs and then up them, not caring about what he bangs into on the way or how he probably looks when he finally reaches the door, throwing it open, standing there, chest heaving as he gasps in air, covered in dirt, looking like he has been born from the mud itself.

“I did it,” he shouts to a hallway full of people who have paused to stare at him, open-mouthed. Behind him, in the cave, he can hear shuffling and footsteps. The creation. Chirrut closes the door, leans on it, tries to regain his composure even though he knows it will not come. “Please let Master Wren know that Guardian Imwe is requesting her presence.” 

At least half a dozen initiates scatter to fulfill his request, and his breathing does not slow, and his heart races because he can hear it, shuffling through the semi-darkness of the kyber cave, questing for something, and he thinks about how soft its skin was and how familiar it feels in the Force. He thinks about this for a moment before he banishes it, pushes it down. Closing his eyes, Chirrut counts his breaths and waits for the master to join him.

 

***

Master Wren, as it turns out, is not amused. He can tell by the way her mouth is pressed into a line and how her hands are folded smart and tight in front of her on the table. This is not what he had expected. Chirrut had expected that the initiates would bring Master Wren to him and that he would cast open the door to the kyber caves, revealing the Force creation in all of its glory and that, then, he would be at ease. He never got that far really. He never got to thinking about what would happen once it was done, once he had proven himself except that he would get to take a break.

This is not that. This is very far removed from that, and he pushes a dirty hand through his dirty hair and sighs and waits while Master Wren presses her lips together and her hands together as though if she simply applies pressure to the right part of her body then she will know how to handle everything. He does not help her; he waits.

The initiates had come back to him with eyes downcast, faces pale. All of the excitement had flown from them and their steps were small and hesitant as though they had been scolded for running down the halls with nonsense spewing from their mouths. Chirrut knows how that reproach feels for was he not once that boy? The kind who was always in trouble, always on the receiving end of a lecture and yet never stilled despite that fact. It’s not how they return that disheartens him so much as the fact that they return alone with no sign of Master Wren following them. That is what makes his stomach and his heart lurch even as he continues to strain to hear the thing shuffling in the dark behind the door he has not dared leave.

He does not think it would stumble into the light, thrust the doors open and hurt them. He does not think this would happen and yet. And yet he does not know. No one knows truly. Even Master Adair who guarded the knowledge, who made sure that it passed to him, for safety’s sake wouldn’t have known what the outcome would be, what precautions to take. Chirrut is lost in a wilderness with no road, no signs, no path. It’s okay, though, he thinks as the initiates cluster around him, not looking at him out of fear or fear of being scolded further, it’s okay because he has walked into the wastes and back. He has traveled into the heart of the wild kyber caves and returned with his prize. He has woken a Force creation into being. He is Chirrut Imwe, a Guardian of the Whills, and he can survive this, too. He has survived much before.

“She will not come?” he asks to make it easier for them to give their bad news, to soften the inevitable blow before it even lands.

One of the initiates shakes their head, eyes still on the ground. “Master Wren requests the presence of Guardian Imwe in the council room.”

“She will not come,” Chirrut repeats, though now it has turned into a weary statement. 

Unsure how else to respond, the child says, “Master Wren requests,” but Chirrut cuts them off with a wave of his hand before they can finish.

“Yes, I heard. Master Wren requests my presence in the council room.” He is filthy. Covered in muck and dirt and kyber sweat. His hair, matted and tangled, needs a wash and a cut, and he could do with a shave, a change of robes. As a Guardian of the Whills, he knows that he should make himself presentable before appearing before the Master. It’s his place, after all, to follow the proper procedure, but it seems pointless at the moment, especially considering the reality of what lies beyond the door he presses his back against as though he could possibly contain the Force creation if it wanted to follow.

It doesn’t even hit him fully until that moment, that if the creation is as strong as the legends, as strong as the Force that flows through it, this door and his paltry strength will be as nothing. He cannot stop it. He cannot hold it back from tearing through the temple if that is what it wills. This, too, is something he never properly thought on, how to stop it once it is in motion. In the story, the creation stopped because the family took it for granted, forgot to see it as the miracle, the blessing that it was, but that was also a children’s tale. In real life, Chirrut isn’t sure that it is so simple, that he could stop a rampage just by snapping his fingers and saying that he no longer believes in it when it is right there in front of his eyes. 

Chirrut pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes, tired, as tired as the man with the weight of a world on his shoulders must be. There was a story that he never cared for as a child, always concerned with how much the man must be suffering, how he probably just wanted someone to take the weight away and let him rest. “Children, I need you to fetch me the keys for the kyber cave door and then promise me that you will not come down this hallway the rest of the day or allow anyone else to do so.”

“You want us to block the way?” This is a different child than the one who spoke Master Wren’s wishes.

Chirrut nods. “Yes, children. As a Guardian, I order you to block this hallway and prevent anyone from coming down it. Can you do that for me?”

It takes only a moment for all the small heads to nod vigorously. 

“Good. Now. I need those keys.”

They bring them to him, and he doesn’t ask how because if he found out he might need to scold them for it, which would be rude after requesting them. It’s possible that they simply located the right guardian, the right master, who would be swayed by the fact that Guardian Imwe has asked for the keys, but he doubts it’s that simple, that clean. He especially doubts this fact considering the looks on their faces, some smug, some downcast and trying to hide a secret. Chirrut has neither the time to ask nor care, focused on two things: making sure the door is secure and then getting to Master Wren to tell her the news, to see why she would not come to hear him in the first place. 

Taking a deep breath, he steels himself and then faces the door, jamming the key into the lock, turning, listening for the fall of tumblers, the assurance that there is at least something secure between the temple of the Whills and the Force creation that wanders the kyber cave. Chirrut presses his body against the door, ear straining, eyes closed, reaching out with all of the senses he can, including the bit of him that has always been immersed, dripping, covered by the Force, to try and find it, shuffling there. He hears nothing. Maybe there is nothing to hear, and he’s not quite sure what he expected to hear anyway, maybe the splash of water as it tumbles into one of the kyber pools, sinking quickly, drug down by the weight of the clay returning to mud, the chunk of bright, hot kyber in its breast, all the bits and bobs of Jedha herself tucked into it, making it heavy, easy to drown. It can’t drown, can it? All it can do is come undone, bit by bit, lose consciousness, lose form, unravel. All that paper, all those secrets he laboriously threaded into it, soggy and waterlogged, the final destruction.

Chirrut strains, mutters, “Come on, then,” not quite even sure what he wants to be the case, whether he wants to know that it slips away, out of sight, forever, or that it is safe, solid, merely waiting for instruction, for companionship. For him. Perhaps. 

Who controls the Creation once it is made? Is it him? Is it the Whills? Is it just the Force? What powers it, what moves it? Why did he never bother considering these questions before? 

He knows why. Blind with grief, deaf with fury, fueled only by the maelstrom of his own emotions, Chirrut just reached and grabbed and moved. He didn’t take the time to consider the consequences. Did he ever think it would even move? Did he ever really consider that there might be success? Or was it just a convenient failure waiting to happen, an easier loss to mourn than all the others losses, the ones that have piled up like a brick wall waiting for just the right nudge to topple them over, to smother him.

Beyond the door, nothing. No sound. Maybe he thought it would be crashing, tearing asunder everything it could reach, his own rage fueled outward in the hands of another, destruction without even a reason but just because it can. That is not what is happening behind the door. He doesn’t know what is happening behind the door, and that troubles him. What if he dreamt it? What if it has not risen? What if it remains on the ground, clay, nothing more, not a miracle, not a vessel of the Force, just dirt and sand and spices and kyber, dashed, done? What if he truly has nothing to show for all of this effort?

Months have been spent on this endeavor, and while he said, just a little bit ago, that he was okay if it was all for naught, is he? Is he, really? Chirrut Imwe, Guardian, Force kissed, praised acolyte of the Temple of the Whills, schooled by the waste, the chosen of Master Adair, can he stomach the idea of adding failure to that list? Is it there already? He grits his teeth, the hand not pressed on the door balling itself into a fist tight enough to leave the imprint of his nails against the palm. “I know you’re there,” he hisses because it is, it has to be, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

The only sign of life that he gets comes not from the physical, but through the Force. A shuddering, a sighing, so small, so slight that he lets his breath out in a long, slow exhale, and focuses even harder to ensure that his mind is not playing tricks on him, that he is not misinterpreting, but, no, it is there. A pulse, a glimmer, like the heartbeat of a star many leagues away. He can feel it, the way it rises and falls, steady but faint, slow like one of the great desert beasts in hibernation. For some reason, he thought maybe it would have the heart of a bird once awake, quick and bright, young. It doesn’t, though. It only has this straining thing, barely blinking, and he worries whether it’s strong enough for the body they built, whether he brought the wrong piece of kyber back from the wild cave. 

Alone, it seems to say into the Force with every beat, and Chirrut bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut tighter because this is not what it was supposed to be. 

Something in him knows the answer without even trying. Something in him whispers back, fervently, through the Force, not alone, and the heartbeat grows stronger, brighter. It occurs to him, then, pressed against the door which he has locked, that the Force creation, even with its size and its strength, is newly born, deserves more than to wander around in the darkness of kyber caves without anyone to tend to it.

I’ll come back, he whispers into the Force, but he doesn’t know if it hears him, if it can understand. All he knows is that the feel of it, the burn of it, is familiar in ways that make so little sense and yet do nothing but comfort him when he stops thinking about everything, when he just sinks into the feeling.

Pushing away from the door at last, Chirrut turns eyes on the initiates still gathered around in the hall. Though all of them are carefully looking somewhere else other than him, he has no doubt that they have been watching him, gauging his movements, trying to figure out what he has been doing. It’s what he would have done as a child only with a lot more insistence to be included and questions tumbling off his tongue like water from a tap. He silently praises their lack of his audacity even as he says, “Remember. The door is locked, but it’s best to keep everyone out of this hallway and away from the door until I return.”

They nod. He pockets the key, he turns on his heel to go find Master Wren, to determine the next steps since he never thought that far ahead when this plan was concocted. What to do now? What to do with the thing in the dark that shuffles, the Force in it crying not to be left alone even as he lifts his feet. 

“Guardian,” one of the children asks, and he glances over his shoulder to look at the girl, her curls close and almost as dark as her skin. 

“Yes.”

“What’s behind the door?”

Tales of monsters and serpents and dangers are on his tongue, but he does not speak them. They don’t feel right, especially not when he remembers how that hand felt on his cheek, how soft, how gentle the beat of its heart behind the door, lonely. “Just the kyber,” is what he says, and then he sprints out of the hallway before they can call his bluff.

Now sitting there with Master Wren at the head of the table, Chirrut feels like his mouth has gone dry, filled with the grit in the sand that he worked into the clay, stuffed with kyber dust and spices and thread, as heavy and motionless as the Creation was before today. If not for his own rhythmic breathing, the pounding of his heart in his chest, which seems as loud as any drum played for the many Whills festivals that he has been a part of during his life, and the nagging, oppressive weight in his head, all his thoughts swarming him as thick as the carrion birds in the wastes that find the fallen bodies of animals who stray too far from their masters and succumb to the elements. (Sometimes, he worries about the disappeared members of the waste Guardians, whether they, too, were felled and eaten away by those birds, but Kai always told him not to worry, that they knew who they were, what they were, and how not to become other than that. Sometimes, it is not enough of a comfort.)

“I do not see why this could have not waited until after you made yourself more presentable, Guardian Imwe,” Master Wren says, finally breaking the standoff they’ve been having since the moment he strode into the room and collapsed bodily into the nearest chair, which would have been her own had she not already been sitting in it.

“I thought this was a matter that we wanted solved with haste, master. I thought it was important. I thought it was integral to the continued prosperity of the temple. To our safety.” I thought you would want to know, goes unsaid, as does, I thought you would be happy to hear that I have succeeded. Swallowed into the vortex of his body is, I thought this meant something to you. I did not think I was alone in wanting to see this through. Smaller, so small that Chirrut himself perhaps cannot even acknowledge is, how have you forgotten me?

Master Wren steeples her hands on the table in front of her and looks at them despite the fact that Chirrut’s eyes are trained on nothing else but her. She is avoiding him, the truth he brings, that much is clear. 

“We have succeeded.”

“So you say, Guardian Imwe. So you say.”

Chirrut straightens up, hands lightly hitting the table as he does, and turns his entire body towards where she sits, hoping that making his posture more open might help draw her in, draw her back. This was the plan all along. He doesn’t understand how it could be forgotten. The months spent toiling, the resources and time and talents of the temple of the Whills poured into the endeavor. Simply because it lay fallow instead of blooming straight away, they have forgotten it? Things take their own time, he is desperate to remind her, words that his teachers loved to heap on him because he was brash and impatient, never minding, never wanting to wait. Things take their own time, he would say with a great appreciation of the inherent irony of those words leaving the mouth of the temple whirlwind. 

Maybe he will say them later. For now, though, he is tired and desperate, he is trying. He wishes, certainly not for the first time and likely not for the last, that Master Adair was still among them. Master Adair who would have heard him, his truth, no matter what words he used. Master Adair who would understand the endeavor, who would be excited about it. Who would be on his side. 

Chirrut feels alone, forgotten, which is not what he should feel in the temple, among his fellows, masters and guardians that he has known all his life, who have raised him and been raised up beside him, but he does. He feels different now, marked, as strange as a bit of kyber from the wild cave mixed in with their own shards, singing differently, a voice out of key. No matter how hard he tries, he can no longer seem to properly match the pitch of the temple. He knows things now, things he would share readily, but they don’t seem to want to hear him.

“It is the truth, Master Wren. I have no reason to exaggerate this fact. If you would only come down to the kyber cave with me, you could see it. I left it there.” Everything he cannot say is thick on his tongue and heavy in his heart. I locked it in, terrified of it, and then felt its fear reflected back at me. It doesn’t want to be alone, either. “It moves. It,” Chirrut waves a hand in the air because lives does not seem right and yet it is full of kyber, it is full of Force, and the Force is in everything living though this creature was not born of flesh, no mother, no father, no bloodline. “It’s animated.” Wrong. That’s wrong. Say it, Chirrut.

“It lives,” his voice cracks, stubborn, as frail and unpredictable as it was during his teens, tripping and falling all over itself, ruining his recitations. It cracks, but those words ring true in his heart. “It lives, master. I will show you. If you will only come to the cave.”

Master Wren looks at her hands. “Bring it here.”

Chirrut just stops for a moment and goes very still, looking at her as aghast as if she had asked him to relieve himself on the table. “Here?”

“Here.”

The idea of leading the Creation out of the cave, past the door, up the stairs, through the halls, into the corridors and rooms that he has called home is unnerving because what happens if he cannot control it or cannot stop it. What happens if it crumbles to nothing but bits of dust and clay on the ground as soon as it steps foot out of the kyber caves? What happens when the others see it? There are people in the temple who know about it, of course, quite a lot but not all. And there is a difference between knowing that something is being made in the caves and seeing it walking, looming, shambling one foot in front of the other like a person, like anyone else in the temple of the Whills. It is dangerous. It is dangerous, he cannot help but think, and yet there was no sense of danger when it touched him, no sense of harm in the feeling it spills into the Force. Just sadness. And loneliness. Just echoes of things that Chirrut has been before. And he left it. Down there. Alone in the dark. After working so long to try and bring it to life, bring it to them. 

“Chirrut,” Master Wren says and if her voice quakes just a little, he pays it no mind, immediately understanding. “Bring it here to me.”

“Now?” He thinks of the children he left to guard the hallway and the door. He doesn’t want them to see it, doesn’t want them thinking there is a monster among them, anything to frighten them. The Whills is safe. The Whills is home to all those lost, all those searching, to everything, to everyone. The temple is home, and home should be secure. He does not want to take that away from them with the revelation of what is beyond the door. 

Master Wren barely blinks, barely moves, but her words contain the type of command someone else might deliver with a clap of their hands. “Now.”

There is no room for arguments. He is halfway across the room before he realizes that he has started moving and then just keeps moving despite his exhaustion, his trepidation.

He hears the voices of the children before he reaches the hallway. None of the words are really distinguishable. It’s just the voices, the rise and fall of soft syllables, bits of gleeful laughter. It doesn’t sound like they’re upset or frightened. It sounds like they’re enjoying themselves, and he wonders how he can quickly make them disperse and keep them out of the way when he has to open the door. He rounds the corner to find, to his dismay, that the door, which he had soundly locked and even attempted to bar, is open. Just a bit. Just the smallest bit at the bottom. 

The door is open, and the children are crowded around it, peering in and murmuring to something that is looking out at them. They are talking. To it. To the creation. They have to be. To Chirrut’s knowledge, nothing and no one else has been in the kyber caves since they began the endeavor and he was left alone save for a couple of visits for weeks. 

“What are you doing?” His voice is too loud and too high, too stern. It sends the children scrambling to their feet, backs to the door, which is the last thing he wants. In his mind’s eye, Chirrut cannot help but think of a thick, Jedha red hand snaking out from the darkness behind the door to drag the children one by one into the cave, to disappear, to be lost forever, taken. Taken by a monster, by a creature he brought to them. 

It makes no sense. He knows it makes no sense, the part of him that is still able to be sensible, but that part is small and tired, overwrought, overworked. The part of him in charge is jumping the remaining steps, sweeping in to put himself between the door and the children. They scatter like nervous birds at his approach, frowning, several of them looking like they are on the verge of tears. One of them remains.

“You were supposed to leave the door locked!” he yells at the retreating backs.

“You said it was only kyber,” protests the remaining one, a girl whose face is growing blotchy with tears that roll down her round cheeks. 

“Stay away from the door, I said.”

“Kyber doesn’t cry!” she wails, stomping a foot hard enough on the floor to catch his attention. She’s not crying because she’s frightened; no, he knows that look, he’s worn it enough himself. She’s crying because she’s mad, at him. “You said it was only kyber! You lied! You locked him in the dark!” One finger jabs toward the door, which remains cracked only the tiniest bit. 

Chirrut follows it and sees those dark, reflective eyes, once glass, now looking as real as any eyes he’s ever seen, though these are filled with water, tears tracing over the cheeks, the one that cracked because he didn’t pay close enough attention, didn’t know what he was doing.

His creation, crouched in the darkness, crying. It never occurred to him that it could cry, and he stops breathing, looking at it.

“You’re mean, Guardian Imwe!” the girl shrieks and then races off to join the rest.

He can hear the clatter of her feet for a few minutes as she runs up the stairs, and then he hears nothing at all except the thudding of the kyber heart, which resounds in his head more than in his ears. Before him, barely lit by the light in the hall, are the tears of the Force creation. They glitter on its skin as though they are filled with bits of kyber. Knowing what it is made of, it’s possible that they are.

The creation reaches out careful fingers, which are probably not long enough or thick enough to be properly in proportion with the rest of its body. They look the same size as his, and Chirrut only barely stops himself from holding out his own hand to compare. It looks at him, and it keens, a noise that is not words, just some strange sound in its throat, but it’s sad. He can tell. It’s impossible to miss. He wonders if it was that sound which drew the children, which made them unlock the door. He can imagine himself at that age, calling into the darkness, thinking something was hurt, wanting to help. Later, he will find the children and apologize.

It seems he has a lot to be sorry for as of late. 

Starting with the creation that looks at him, all wet eyes, blinking slowly, capable of looking at him longer and deeper than any eyes he has ever seen on living, breathing, birthed creatures. But it looks at him like it knows him, like it missed him, and those fingers remain out, waiting. 

He touches the tips of his fingers to the tips of its fingers, and the mouth that he saw sculpted, lifts, pulls, smiles.

“I came back. I said I would.” They are paltry those words, but they are the only ones he has, and the creation smiles even wider despite the tears in its eyes.

Chirrut is not quite sure of the best way to go about this next step, the process of getting the Force creation out of the caves and into the rest of the temple, convincing it through the spiraling hallways and the multitude of stairs between here and where Master Wren sits, waiting, doubting. It would be so much easier if she had simply followed him, if she had been willing to acquiesce, if she had been the one willing to journey, but Chirrut supposes that this might be asking too much of her. Hasn’t he already convinced the elders to allow him to experiment with this folly, after all? And haven’t they already been let down by it thus far? Why, then, should they even believe him now, after he has spent months in the caves by himself with nothing but kyber and worms and clay to keep him company? Why should it be so strange for them to think him gone mad following all of that?

It has, of course, not been folly. Chirrut knows that now looking into those deep pool eyes--how could they just be bits of glass in a carved clay face, how could they ever have been anything other than alive?--and that small quirk of a smile. It has not been a folly, not just some wish cast into the night sky to be burned away by the light of the sun in the morning. No, it is real, and it is true, before him, solid, breathing.

Why is it breathing? Why does it need to breathe? Chirrut formed its lungs himself, a facsimile of life only so how do they work, how does any of this work? Just through belief? Chirrut, despite being raised in the Temple of the Whills, despite being raised steeped in belief, never thought of it like this, as something so strong as to raise bits of inanimate objects into real, shuddering life, which is what the Creation is, isn’t it? Life born of mud and sticks and Force. Chirrut wishes, not for the first time since this began and certainly not for the last, that Master Adair was still here, convinced that they would somehow know how all of this was possible, that they would be able to understand and then explain it all to him afterward. 

Behind the door, it breathes and looks at him. 

Chirrut settles on the floor of the hallway and opens the door a little more, enough so he can fully see the creation now, huddled on the other side, its hair a mess, its face marked by tear trails, and he imagines what it must have been like for the children, to be guarding the door, to hear crying, maybe keening, but he doesn’t understand how they were able to open the door with the key in his own pocket. Picked the lock probably, the same way that he would have picked the lock as a child to get the sound of something shuddering, crying, alone in the dark. He has acted harshly in a number of ways, has a litany of apologies that need to be made once he has time to do so. The time, of course, is not now. The only thing he has time for now is getting the creation up, out of the darkness, and into the light, into the heart of the temple itself where it is warm and welcoming. Somehow, he will have to make it understand.

Somehow, though he will also need to make it presentable, which is something that he himself isn’t at the moment. They are both dirty, covered in mud, hair tangled and unkempt, but where Chirrut has grown pale and thin, muscle mass having withered down during his months of semi-exile, the Creation is thick and broad. And altogether naked, he realizes when the being shifts slightly, allowing him a view of its groin, which used to be carefully covered with a sheet when it lay on its pallets and was still there when Chirrut fled but is definitely gone now.

Oh, Force, Chirrut thinks, and looks away because he knew that the master sculptors prided themselves on this work, wanted to make it look every bit of the perfect specimen, but he had not imagined that this attention to detail would extend itself to certain areas. Even though the Whills says nothing against existing in one’s natural form, there is no way that Chirrut is going to parade the creation through the halls of the temple with that on display. For one reason, it would distract him the entire time, and for another, he does not need to have to pause to explain to every person they encounter why he is leading a naked man to the council room and why they cannot chat said naked man up. For that is what the creation looks like, a naked man, perfect in form, though littered with scars from all the ways in which Chirrut did not know how to tend the clay and all the times they had to open different pieces of the body up, the way they had to create it outside to in, inside to out. Chirrut no longer sees seams, though, now all he sees are scars, up the insides of the arms, down the fronts of the legs, a T-shape on the barrel chest that extends down the slight pouch of the belly--made to withstand great weight, made to withstand the moon herself on its shoulders--these are the markings of creation. A collection of smaller scars prove his own failure, the most damning the one on the creation’s face, and Chirrut reaches for it without thinking, gasps slightly when the creation leans into the touch instead of away, as though it knows him, as though it trusts him.

Perhaps, it has imprinted on him, the way that chicks hatched and raised without mothers will imprint on their keepers. It was Chirrut who breathed into it finally, alone, in the cave before it rose, and it was Chirrut who it saw upon waking. And it is Chirrut who has spoken to it, who has come back for it.

It was also Chirrut who left it alone in the dark, but if it holds that against him, it gives no sign. Chirrut wonders, with its cheek under his fingers, its warm, flesh soft cheek, how long of a memory it possesses, whether it will forget slights as soon as they are out of eyesight. He wonders whether any of this was a good idea in the first place, whether he thought any of this through, whether he would have had second thoughts, different ideas, if he had known that it would work. 

Force, who ever would have thought that it would actually work.

The creation leans into his hand the way a docile lothcat would, and Chirrut is surprised that kindness, gentleness is the way it reacts first. It is a physical powerhouse. It was created to be their savior, their monument to all the ways in which the Whills will not fall, not be trodden into the ground, stand tall and stand true against everything that the universe and the Empire can throw at them, meet them blow for blow. It was meant to be a warning. It was meant to be something akin to a monster, honestly, something unwavering, something intimidating. And yet. And yet these first reactions speak nothing of that.

He woke with its fingers on his face in a caress similar to what they are sharing now. And when he left it alone in the dark, it followed his path up to the door and cried despondently enough that children found a way to open the door to get to it. It had not looked like it was threatening the children, either. It does not look threatening now not even naked and dirty with wild hair and that scar across its face. It does not look like anything that could hurt anyone. It looks peaceful like sitting at the edge of a kyber pool, listening to the crystals sing. Beneath the clay turned flesh, Chirrut can still hear the steady beating of that heart, wonders whether it is still crystal or has turned into muscle and tissue and blood the way the rest of the creation seems to have done.

It is all very strange. It is all too strange for Chirrut to try and comprehend at the moment as exhausted as he is, as at the end of his rope and ready for a break, for something to be simple. Life, he thinks Master Adair would say, is never simple.

Finally, Chirrut lifts his hand, does not think of the way that the creation seems to look forlorn at the loss of the contact when he folds both his hands into his lap and just looks at it for a moment. “I don’t know if you can understand me, and I’m not quite sure how to explain it to you even if you do. It’s,” he breaks off, sighs, runs a hand over his face, and tries not to fixate on the way that creation watches him, tilts its head, gazes steadily, the fact that it does not blink enough the only thing that seems to set it apart as other at the moment, fixates on him. “There’s a lot for us to tell you. There’s a lot to know.” He buried words in it, he filled it with words, with the torn up scraps of the book that resulted in it being built, and Chirrut wonders if that will help. Does filling the creation with words ensure that it will have words. He used the words for its tongue, will it be able to speak? 

There are so many questions, but he does not have the time for them now. The very weight of all the possibilities settles so heavily on his shoulders, on every part of him that he finally feels it, how tired he is, how hard he has been pushing himself. It feels like every moment between when he passed the Guardian trial and now finally settles on him, and he thinks it’s a wonder he doesn’t crumble right onto the ground.

Carry on, he tells himself. You are the foundation of the temple. Stand a little longer. “There’s a lot for you to know,” he repeats, hopes that somehow, in some way, the creation will understand him. “We’ll get to all of those things. Later.” He might as well be talking to a stone, he thinks, but there seems to be something in those wide, wet, dark eyes--once glass that he picked from a tray--that looks like maybe it does comprehend. “For now, I need you to follow me.” This shouldn’t be too difficult, he thinks. Hadn’t the creation already followed him, really, up the stairs, out of the cave, to the door, when he left it the first time?

Chirrut stands, his entire body protesting the fact that it has to keep going, that he is not taking some shred of pity on it yet when it has done so much, when it has surely earned a bit of respite. He stands, and he opens the door more fully, not just enough that the creation would be able to slink through like a shadow, like something not meant for the halls of the temple, but wide, the way he would open the doors for any master, any Guardian, the way he opened the doors for Obi-Wan the night he took him into and quickly out of the caves. Then, he waits to see what the creation will do. 

For a moment, it remains where it is, hunkered on the ground, peering up at him, body on full display because it knows nothing of modesty, has no reason to attempt to hide any part of its body, which the master artisans obviously heaped all of their expertise on. As he watches it, waiting, wondering if he will need to try and coerce it somehow, Chirrut wonders whether it feels things like cold or heat, if it will know fatigue. Though it looks--and feels--as though it is made of flesh, it is not born of flesh; it is born of clay and dust and kyber. Chirrut has heard of kyber crystals, used too long or wielded for the wrong purposes, that shatter when the life is out of them, burst into nothing but a cloud of sparkles in the air, but the texts on Force theory that described those indicated the kyber in those situations had typically been around for hundreds of years if not longer. Will the creation last that long? Or will it wither quickly, spent? There is no way that he can know. This thing he has created, the achievement he has managed, has no other record, nothing to compare it to in all of the Force history that he knows. 

Everything about the Force creation is a mystery and this gnaws at Chirrut somewhat. He has always been the kind of person who wants so badly just to know.

Just when he thinks that he may need to reach for it or utilize one gesture or another, the Force creation slowly gets to its feet. Its movements are ponderous, shaky; it rises like one who is unused to standing, and Chirrut considers that perhaps it crawled up the stairs, though he does not see any wounds on its knees when he cautiously glances down. There’s a moment when he thinks it might topple, rocking backward slightly, and he reaches a hand out instinctively despite the fact that he is pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to right it if it started to fall. Somehow, it steadies, eyes locked on his hand. It steadies and then it moves slightly toward him, towers over him, and it was easy to misjudge how large it would be when it was nothing more than a form on pallets on the cave floor. Chirrut knew it was broader, wider, thicker than him, but he had not imagined how tall, and he had sped out of the cave so quickly earlier that he had not truly taken note of its dimensions.

It is not the tallest sentient in the Whills, but it might very well be the tallest humanoid-like creature. And the artisan masters were careful to keep things in proportion, other than its hands, which Chirrut purposefully focuses on because they are similar in size to his, though darker colored and crisscrossed with small scars from the clay drying out. He has not a good keeper of the creation when it was under his care, and he wonders, not for the first time, whether he is cut out for this task at all.

Had he been thinking, he would have fetched clothing before coming back to the kyber cave, but he was not. Besides, considering the antics of the children, it’s difficult to know what might have happened if he had been just a little later in getting back. The creation might be wandering through the halls--naked--without him, lost, startlingly any and everyone it came across instead of simply being in the halls naked with Chirrut to guide it and watch it. As it is, walking the creation all the way to his room and then back across the temple to the council room will take entirely too much time and also draw too much unwanted attention. The easiest thing for Chirrut to do is to untie his knotted red sash and divest himself of his black outer robe as quickly as possible before anyone comes. It’s something of a small miracle that no one has come down this hallway and discovered them already all things considered. Perhaps the children managed to do him a small favor before succumbing to the crying and getting the door open.

“Stand still.” It’s not until it’s out of his mouth that he realizes how futile the words probably are as he still has no idea whether the creation is cognizant of their meanings. 

The creation blinks at him, head tilted, hair a mess but somehow still lovely. Covered in mud the creation looks every bit as resplendent as any piece of art scattered throughout the temple hallways.

And then Chirrut thinks about the fact that all the words tucked deep into the body are in sand language rather than Jedhan. “Be still,” he says, the sand language on his tongue rough, course like kissing sand, like kissing the creation’s lips when it was still clay and dust, telling it goodbye if it wanted to go before it had even really started.

“Be still,” he says again. “I won’t hurt you.”

It’s hard to know whether the creation understands him or if it remains where it is simply because it is curious and prone to remaining steady like the kyber and the bits of Jedha that comprise its body are steady.

Slowly, he approaches it, lifting one arm to guide the sleeve of the robe over and then the next, walking gingerly behind it in the process. Unsurprisingly, the robe is small, but not so small that it will not tie closed in the front, though the sleeves are too short and the hem of it falls right below the creation’s knees in a way that makes Chirrut worry its every step will once again put its artisanally crafted cock on display. The robe is also filthy, completely stiff in some places due to the amount of caked dirt. The fact that it glimmers with kyber dust does little to make it more presentable.

“If Master Wren was hoping for a ceremony, she is going to be disappointed,” Chirrut mutters, mostly to himself, because the creation certainly notes when he is speaking, whether sand or Jedhan, but still makes no outward sign that it understands. Short of it answering him, Chirrut isn’t quite sure how he would know whether it comprehends or not. “We’re going to go up some stairs and through a lot of halls. Just follow me.” He speaks to it evenly, not raising his voice or talking slowly, speaking to it the way he would talk to anyone, and Chirrut doesn’t even consider that maybe some of that is simply for his own benefit. 

When he first steps away from it, heading towards the main stairs, it does not follow. He turns to find it still in front of the door to the kyber caves, looking at him, and the expression on its face is still sad, almost forlorn. “You can come this time,” Chirrut says, walks back towards it enough that he can catch the trailing edge of one of those too short sleeves. “Come,” he says in sand language, and tugs.

Chirrut walks, arm stretched out behind him, fingers clenched in dirty fabric. Chirrut walks, and it follows.

 

***

Their ascension from the main floor of the temple to the council room near the top is slow going and arduous as the creation is ever stopping to gaze at things, raising its free arm, long, thick, to point at everything from tapestries on the wall to bits of sunlight that find their way in through the slit windows to dance across the stone. Each time Chirrut has to plead and tug and placate until it moves again. He makes so many promises of things to explain later that he has forgotten more than half of them by the time he finally reaches the door behind which he’s not even sure whether Master Wren is still waiting. It’s been ages. She might have determined that he returned to the kyber caves to pass out on the ground and sleep off his delusions; he wouldn’t blame her at this rate. However, they’re here now, there’s no sense going anywhere without trying first.

Chirrut does not even knock, just pushes the door open, expecting to find an empty room awaiting him. Instead, Master Wren is right where he left her, sitting primly at the table, though there’s a cup of green tea at her right and a book in her left hand. She looks up startled, appearing slightly guilty that he has caught her in the midst of relaxing, but then she catches herself, composes her face, places the book cover down on the table and slides it away.

It’s only then that she really looks at what awaits her. Chirrut knows because she audibly gasps, followed by a high Jedhan curse muttered under her breath.

He wants to shout, “See?” so loud and that it will echo around the room, through the door and become as loud as a tolling bell throughout the hallways. He wants to shout, “See?” so loud that the entire temple will hear, so that NiJedha herself will hear. If he had been younger, he might have allowed himself to do so, but he is not so he just stands there, trying to compose his face so that it does not give him away. 

The creation tilts its head and pulls slightly away from his grip on its sleeve, and Chirrut knows that it wants to wander the large council room, probably touch all the little everyday things that are new and grand to it. He has no idea how to convince it to sit down, whether it will even be able to understand the concept of a chair. It had been sitting on the floor behind the door to the kyber cave, but that is different than a piece of furniture. 

After a moment longer while Master Wren does nothing except gape, Chirrut settles into a nearby chair, one arm stretched out, fingers still gripped in the creation’s sleeve to act as a tether, a holding point. “We have succeeded,” Chirrut says because he doesn’t know what else to say, what else to do other than something that will be rude and unkind. Even this feels on the edge of that, but it is only the three of them in the room, and he greatly doubts that either of his companions will be jumping up to chastise him, and he is too tired to feel overly guilty about it.

“Guardian Imwe, I,” Master Wren starts, and for the first time, Chirrut sees her as she might have been as an initiate, struck silent in awe, eyes wide, hand over her mouth, just looking and taking everything in to process. “I did not doubt your belief, but I doubted that the Force would move for us in this way,” are the words that she is finally able to get out.

The creation, which had been standing near a table, its free hand questing towards the things on it, has started to pay attention to the fact that there is someone else in the room, and it turns. Chirrut isn’t sure that he could stop it if he wanted to, but it hasn’t shown itself to be dangerous yet. Perhaps it is the mention of the Force that makes it turn towards Master Wren, lets her see its face fully, and the shoddy way in which Chirrut has dressed it due to his haste. 

“It’s as filthy as you are,” she says, “but glorious just the same.”

“I did the best I could with what was at hand, as the temple teaches,” Chirrut says, trying not to be exhausted by how quickly awe can turn into something nearing derision in the mouths of some people. He is tired and hungry and dirty, yes, and there is still a massive amount of things that he needs to do. The archive is still a shambles. Thanks to Kai he was able to get the data section back up and going, but the majority of the books and scrolls are simply stacked on tables and chairs and shelves, waiting for him to return and put them to rights. With Master Adair’s previous system dashed and unknown, Chirrut will be able to put his own into place, if he wants, if he can stomach it. 

Master Wren has steepled her hands on the table in front of her, still watching the creation, which has gone back to examining the things before it, picking each one up more delicately than Chirrut would have thought possible. “Is it always this docile?”

He isn’t sure what she was expecting out of this experiment. Except for failure. “As long as I’ve known it, which hasn’t been long.”

“Do you think we could train it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does it understand our words?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can it utilize the Force in the same way that our lost cousins did?”

He feels like rolling himself down the stairs all the way to the ground floor. That seems like it would be less taxing at the moment. “I don’t know.”

Her brow furrows in obvious irritation, and Chirrut thinks he gets it, some part of him gets it. He had told them that Master Adair had made provisions, he had toted the Force creation as something that would be able to save them from the Empire, but he hadn’t really known what good it was going to be. There was no hint of that in the book. Yet he had sold it as that or, rather, he had not dashed their hopes when they took it that way. All he knows is that this was a Force theory that could not be acquired by their enemies, which meant that they needed to see it through. Everything else was an unknown, a question mark, something to be figured out later.

Now it is later, and he has no answers to provide and a creation that is gingerly lifting a vase made of porcelain and covered in watercolor flowers and does not look menacing or imposing at all. He can understand the disconnect.

“Is there anything about it that you do know?” she asks, and her voice is the same tone as the masters who used to teach him, who used to exasperatedly demand he listen or settle down or not get ahead of the class, Imwe. 

What does he know about it? He knows that it moves ponderously, slow, as though still finding its legs and understanding how and that they can move. He knows that it can see and likes to look at everything, wanting to touch, amazed by anything near it. He knows that its heartbeat is so loud in the Force that he doubts he’ll ever be able to unhear it. And he knows that it can cry because he watched it, knows also that it can smile. Still, he doesn’t think that any of these things are what Master Wren wants to know about it, none of these are things that will strike fear in the heart of anyone.

“I know that we made it out of clay and string and bits of metal. I know that we cobbled it together out of handfuls of things most might consider junk. I know that the Force deemed us worthy, and it rose.” He will not talk about how it rose, what he said to finally get there, he will not divulge his own private ceremony with the creation where he apologized to it, said it was free to go, filled it not only with his own breath but with his kiss. He does not mention how the final ceremony was one of sadness, acceptance, longing rather than asking for protection or a warrior. Chirrut wonders whether this will make a difference in the creation’s quest.

He uses his free hand to gesture at the creation and the room around them. “Surely, we can teach it everything else it might need to know or do. This is the Temple of the Whills. All we do is train. All we do is teach. We can teach the creation.”

Master Wren looks at him as though he asked her to teach a droid. “It’s not one of us, Guardian Imwe. It’s a tool to keep the Empire at bay. It’s a tool we set out to make specifically because we didn’t want the Empire to have it. It’s not a lost child on the temple doorstep. It’s not an orphan from the sands.”

“It’s not a Jedi Knight, either,” he says, and then bows his head because of the look that he receives in return. “I beg your pardon, master, but I think it is shortsighted to think it would rise knowing everything it needs to know, ready to battle the Empire at a moment’s notice. It is clay, after all. What does clay know of war?”

“It is Jedhan clay,” she says as though this should explain everything, and Chirrut sighs as inaudibly as he can. 

Master Wren settles her cheek on her hand and just looks at the creation, still thoroughly intrigued by the vase and seemingly paying no heed to their discussion, and sighs herself. “Perhaps the idea of it will be enough.”

“What?” Chirrut asks.

“An idea can be a powerful thing, Guardian Imwe.”

He knows. He was raised in the midst of thousands of ideas, not all of them even his own. 

“We’ll start the rumor, send it out across the stars.”

“Rumor?” 

“That the Whills has made a monster. That the Force has given us a monster to protect us. That the monster will tear asunder any who dare to threaten the Whills.”

He flinches every time she says the word, monster, as though she hasn’t looked at the creation herself, hasn’t seen how beautifully made it is, still lovely even with the scar across its face, how gently it holds the vase. She hasn’t seen it cry. She doesn’t know that it wept sorrowfully enough to drive children tasked with holding a door into picking open a lock so that it would not sit sad and alone in the darkness of the kyber caves.

The Force is life, he wants to say, and while the Force is neither inherently good nor evil, flows into and through all things equally, he does not think that Force would gift them--or anyone--a monster.

“Can we not call it a protector?” is the thing he asks, the only words he allows off his tongue because he knows the trouble any of the others would bring him. He might be the only person in the temple who knows all the ins and outs of building a Force creation, but that does not give him more authority than Master Wren. He is too exhausted for this fight now.

Master Wren has stopped looking at the creation as though it is not worth her time when it is like this, silent and still, fascinated like a child. Would she rather it be here snarling, he wonders, would she rather he have to tie it up and hold it back? She stirs her tea as though none of this is anything special, as though a Force miracle does not stand among them. Only minutes have passed since he walked into the room and her mouth fell open in amazement. How quickly amazement can die. “Which do you think will have a greater impact, Imwe, tales of a monster or tales of a protector? Protector implies mortal, feeble, something that can be bested. Monster implies something that’s other, something dire, larger than life, difficult to fell. These are superstitious times, Imwe, it’s best that we play into them.”

Chirrut has never been so glad that he does not wear the robes of diplomacy.

“What will be done with the creation?” He will not call it a monster. It deserves more than that, the Force inside of it deserves more than that.

“We put it at the door where people can see it.” Master Wren stands from the table as though everything is done, as though this chapter is closed. There is nothing to see here, her stance declares. There is nothing abnormal. Today is every other day. “It will help the rumors grow and spread. Now, if you will excuse me I must go talk to the traveling Masters. We’ll need assistance in getting the word of the monster out.”

She gets to the door before she seems to remember that Chirrut is slumped over the table, one hand still caught in the sleeve of the robe draped over the creation, which is watching Master Wren again now that she’s moving. “You can take it to the shed in the garden, Imwe. We can keep it there. Take it to the shed and then rest. Tomorrow, we will have need of your expertise. The archive is still a shambles.”

 

***

Chirrut is unsure what to do when Master Wren slips out of one of the private doors at the back of the council room, leaving him alone with his head resting on his arm on the table as though he was suddenly a small, pouting child again. At the end of the tether, the creation has stopped his careful consideration of the artwork, setting it down, and just standing there, looking back at Chirrut as though trying to gauge something on his face, trying to understand. Maybe it’s the way the creation is of the Force that makes him draw nearer, that slightly sad, slightly appraising look growing ever stronger, and Chirrut knows that he should see the beauty in it, which he does, but he also always looks at the scar, the way in which he accidentally ruined it before it even had the chance to ruin itself. It’s the sort of careless act a child would make, not taking proper care of something and the result being that it becomes damaged. Chirrut, it seems, is no better than a spoiled child despite his title of Guardian and his forced role as archive master, and sitting here wallowing in it isn’t doing anything to disprove that fact. 

What is he supposed to do now? Take the creation outside to the gardens, leave it in the shed such that it will cry and moan and allow the stories of a Force monster having been created by the Whills to grow and expand until they carry across NiJedha and then Jedha herself and then outward. Rumors and stories have a habit of traveling faster than news. People like to talk about things that scare them, they like the way it can bring them closer together, discovering communal fears and a way to dash them, a way to destroy them in the light. Wasn’t that the reason he would slip out of bed with his peers to tell strange tales in the middle of the night when they were children?

And now one of those same stories has come to life, is standing in front of him, looking at him, and it is not dangerous, it is not terrifying, it is not a threat at all. At least not that he can see or understand. All he sees is a being made beautiful but flawed through his own incompetence. All he sees is a being with a heart whose beat he thinks he will hear no matter how far the distance between them because that heart is (was?) kyber and beats through the Force itself. 

He does not see a monster, and he will not be able to call it a monster.

Chirrut thinks that they should message Myek and tell her, let her know that her Force creation is a real thing brought to life, let her spread the news through the stars as she travels. The fact that it was her story to begin with would probably help lend credence to the words, and he already knows that Myek can spin a good tale, would definitely do so for the sake of the Whills. Perhaps Master Wren has already gone to do this, but he isn’t sure that Master Wren would know Myek’s name. Myek, who never really distinguished herself except as someone who loved to fly, the initiate always climbing into any ships left unattended, begging pilots across the breadth of NiJedha to teach her. He thinks he recalls that on several occasions a clutch of Guardians were sent out into the city to locate Myek and bring her back after she had escaped to locate a pilot, having gone too long without being in the air at the temple itself. Myek is a story herself, a girl who should have been born with swan wings but was let down, left with only a human body, confined to the sands.

He sighs, and the creation draws nearer as though concerned that he is hurt. Chirrut tugs at the sleeve in his hand in an attempt to placate it, calm it, without even really considering that it might not know how to take the gesture. It doesn’t seem to, walks closer to him instead, one hand extended as though it might want to run those fingers across his cheek again. There are different levels of touch in the temple. Different beings have varying levels of comfort with it altogether. Master Adair never really liked to be touched, though they would extend some parental gestures to Chirrut on occasion, pats on the back, hands on the shoulder, a palm on the head, just small tokens of affection. No hugs, no caresses. In the temple, Chirrut rarely had that. His Force sense, always so bright and a point of contention with his peers, resulted in the other initiates also shying away from touching him when they were not sparring, almost as if they were afraid that whatever affected him, whatever made him able to feel and hear and sense the Force more than they could would rub off. The strange thing that always surprised him. If they wanted what he had, wouldn’t they have tried to touch him more? Then he recalls what Kai said, about how they were probably scared of him instead of envious. People commonly do not want to touch what frightens them. 

Perhaps this is the reason that the Force creation strikes no fear in him, not really, because his hands formed some of it, and he saw the rest of it being made. He has been with it from the outset before it was even a thing, when it was only a pile of rubble on pallets. He might be somewhat concerned about what it can become, what it can do, out of not understanding or being left to its own devices, not being taught, but he isn’t terrified of it. It does not make his stomach quiver or the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not that he thinks any of his hair could stand up at this point because that is how covered in filth he is, caked from head to toe, just like his clothing. 

He might not know what grand next steps need to be taken, but he knows one thing he can do; he can take a shower, he can change his clothes, and he can sleep in his own bed instead of on a pallet on the floor of the dirty, sandy, muggy kyber cave. And because he cannot currently fathom the idea of locking the creation in a shed in a garden, he can take it with him and deal with however that decision decides to backfire on him. Later.

With another sigh, Chirrut pushes away from the table and stands, feeling the ache deep in his muscles from the lack of training, and the inconsistent sleeping and the stress. At the moment, he is not fit to call himself a Guardian, he is barely fit to call himself an Initiate of the Whills, and that will be its own mountain to climb, though he has no real fear that he won’t be able to accomplish it. Training has always come easy to him, as easy as feeling the Force. Perhaps they will allow him to show the creation their forms, to take it through their training so that it can fight at their side should the day come when the Empire will not be kept away by rumors alone. Assuming that the creation stays together that long. He has no idea how any of this will last. It is all an unknown.

“I still don’t know if you can understand me,” he says, sliding his chair back under the table, “but we’re going to the showers. I need a shower. I’m dirty. Technically, you’re dirty, too.”

The Force creation also has clay and sand and kyber dust all over its body. Its hair and beard have gotten tangled, matted from sitting in the moisture and the press of hands against it. Maybe he should have cleaned it--and himself--before showing up to speak to Master Wren. She might have been more impressed with that, more inclined to listen to Chirrut’s suggestion, would have seen a miracle instead of a monster. Part of him, however, is concerned that the water will turn the creation back to its elements, wash it apart, send it down the drain and leave him with nothing once again. The creation, he knows, is not his as it belongs to the Temple, is made of and for the temple, but he cannot help but feel slightly possessive of it when he carried its heart across the sands and he crafted parts of its insides with his own hands, and he breathed into its mouth, the final breath, the one that woke it. No, he cannot help but feel slightly possessive of it and slightly concerned, like it is in his care and if it fades away into nothing then it will leave him alone with only the books and scrolls and datapads, things that cannot interact with him, things that are fixed, things that do not possess the possibility to learn.

He is worried about what the water might do, but he supposes that it is better to cross that bridge now than have it be a surprise, an unfortunate accident, something out of his control, like letting the creation dash out into the rains during the storm season and watching it melt into a pile of refuse on the ground. Better to see what happens now than later, come up with a plan if need be, a way around it, which could be sand baths or something else.

The creation, in an echo of his own gesture, has curled its fingers into his sleeve so their arms press together. They are so almost holding hands. They are so almost holding hands that it practically pains him so he lets his fingers go and then gently pries the creation’s fingers away from his sleeve to twine their hands together. And if something in the creation’s face goes soft and almost wistful at the gesture, Chirrut takes no note of it. “It’s easier this way,” is all he says, as much to himself as to it, trying to make himself feel better, not get too attached. If you say that a thing is not a thing, does that truly stop it from becoming something? He doesn’t know, but all he can do is try, all he can do is say it is easier this way and not I want to hold a hand, I want to hold someone’s hand and perhaps that will make it the truth after all. 

***

As it is the middle of the day, the Guardian shower room is completely empty. All of the others are either in the midst of their jobs tending the gate or the initiates, walking the streets of NiJedha or sleeping if they have later shifts. He should not be disturbed by anyone walking into the communal area to find him naked with a large, unknown, mute man who will potentially start melting to the ground at any moment. Chirrut considers trying to lock or otherwise barricade the door, but he knows that would likely result in people more quickly attempting to open it. It’s simply better to act as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening, to go about the process as though it is an everyday thing, which it is as Chirrut has been showering with others since he was a child, the temple not having any real stance against it, no concepts of body shame that would result in them not being able to. Really, the main thing that gives him pause is his concern regarding the creation’s make-up and whether or not the water will undo all of it. 

He stops at his room on the way to gather up more clothing as the things he and the creation are wearing should probably be burned at this point, filthy beyond washing, torn and caked in all manner of things. The last thing Chirrut wants to do following a shower is put any of them back on so he is quick to grab what they will need, knowing all the while that there is a large possibility it won’t fit either of them properly, too small for the creation and slightly too large for Chirrut who has lost weight and muscle mass during his time in the caves. The clothes will just have to do, though; he’s in no mood to wander all the way around the temple gathering new provisions. He has an unexpected quantity of free time--the rest of the day--staring him in the face, and he wants to use it to sleep. Everything else can come after. Figuring out what to do about the creation can come after as well, whether to go ahead and follow through with the dictates that have been handed down by Master Wren or doing something other, something that he hasn’t even worked out yet. 

Part of him, a small voice in the back of his mind that sounds an awful lot like the Chirrut he was when he was young, thinks that perhaps he should just let the creation loose to wander the wastes, send it to the Guardians Rook and Kai to tend, though he doesn’t know how it would reach them, how it would ever know how to find them. Perhaps it could just follow the roaring of the wild kyber in the cave where its heart originated. Maybe that would be enough to lead it home, but he doesn’t know. He isn’t sure. He thinks, once again, how much easier this would all be if Master Adair was still there, how they would inevitably know what to do. How much of this was their orchestration? 

He has heard the rumors, the stories, of how some Force users, like their lost cousins--truly lost now, he thinks, struck down and ruined, wiped out of the universe seemingly so easily, too easily, when the Whills managed to stand--could see the future, catch snatches of it in their dreams, know what was to pass. It crosses his mind that perhaps Master Adair was one of the set with this ability, that they saw the future. Maybe from the moment that Chirrut set foot in the archive on that day, long ago, determined to prove a fellow wrong, Master Adair had known that here was not only his successor--though there is another decision that still needs to be made--but also the boy who would bring a Force creation to life. To do what exactly? Save the Whills? Save Jedha? 

Save Chirrut himself?

Does he need saving? Is that what all of this has come to, that the initiate who was once unable to be bested even by those five years his senior needs to be rescued from some fate unknown?

He doesn’t know. Chirrut would run a hand over his face in irritation but both of them are full. The only things that are sure in the moment are these: he is standing in the middle of his room laden down with fresh clothing, covered in mud, distraught, his body a poor imitation of what it used to be, his mind fraught with everything that has occurred over the past year, holding the hand of a Force creation that, only hours ago, was nothing more than clay and wishes. And the creation is full of his own breath, tempted to life by his own kiss.

That last part? That was likely never part of anyone’s plan, and Chirrut isn’t sure whether he will ever be able to own up to it to anyone because how would he even manage it, how would he go about it? Walking up to someone and telling them that he kissed a statue--with tongue--would likely get a shocked reaction from even the most sexually open-minded members of the Whills. Consent, Chirrut. Boundaries, Chirrut. Are you actually that lonely, Chirrut?

It scares him a little bit to think that the answer to that last one is yes, a resounding yes. He is exactly that lonely. He has ever been almost that measure of lonely, a life of exile forced onto him by circumstances of his life that manage to be completely out of his realm to control. As though he had been born reaching, wanting, aching for the Force? No, it was simply a thing given to him by the universe. And on a lot of days--too many to count--he would readily give it back for just a taste of something else, kinship, acceptance, companionship. He had these things in the waste, yes, but there he was among a group of people who readily considered themselves misfits, outsiders, and one of their number wouldn’t even give him their name. Still. A sort of family. More of a family than he has in the here and now inside the temple walls.

He should be too tired for this sort of melancholic rumination, but it comes to him in waves anyway, strong enough that he almost sets the clothes down and just curls onto his bed to sleep while filthy and bedraggled. The only thing that stops him is the way the creation tugs at his hand, and Chirrut doesn’t know if the movement means anything other than a mirror of what he had done earlier or not, but it spurs him onward anyway, out of the room and down the hall to the shower room, which is just as empty as he had expected.

Closing the door behind them, Chirrut settles the clothes into cubbies in the far wall meant for just that purpose before turning his attention back to the creation. It stands, broad and thick, looking every bit as much of a man as any that he has ever seen, and he is again struck by how well the master artisans did with their task. If anyone in the temple would understand why he looks at it and does not see a monster, it would be them. They deserve to see it the way it is now, moving, animated, so much of their careful work on display, though there are still some bits that he questions their attention to detail on but that would spark yet another stranger conversation that he doesn’t want to have or even imagine because how do you shame someone for sculpting a perfect cock without admitting that you’ve not only looked at it but judged it to be so. No, it’s better if he simply ignores that area as much as possible. 

With the door closed, Chirrut doesn’t worry about holding its hand so much, not that worried that the creation will wander away. He’s not sure that it understands doors yet as it was clearly the children who had opened the door to the kyber caves. If the creation had made its own way out, it would have simply smashed the door to bits, wouldn’t it? That would make sense. That was what it was designed to do, that’s the amount of power that they tried to encapsulate within its form. 

This does not mean that it is the right answer, of course, but it is the easy answer, and Chirrut is too tired for anything other than easy answers at the moment.

There is one thing he needs an answer to before the showering can commence, however, which is what has him walking around the creation, who is fascinated with the tiles on the walls and the way the cubbies are carved into the stone, to make sure that it sees his face when he says, “Wait here,” in both Jedhan and sand language, hoping that will increase the odds of him being understood. Then he taps his foot on the ground. “Stay here. Right here. I’ll be back.” Still said in both languages, one right after the other, and the sand language is rough, as rough as the scrub trees in the wastes, but it is still that one that seems to make the creation almost smile. Perhaps it does know that one, after all, all the words from those pages having seeped into the clay, into its mind, perhaps even its tongue.

Can we teach you to speak, Chirrut wonders as he backs slowly away from where the creation stands, having shuffled over to the exact spot that he tapped with his foot. Once he is more or less confident that there will be no rushed following of him straight into the water, Chirrut turns his back to the creation and grabs one of the pitchers hanging from the bathing wall, which also contains shelves with stacks of soap bars and containers of oils for hair and all other sorts of things meant for all the various species and races that are represented in the Whills. Then he fills the pitcher half full of water, not too much but enough to make a decent test, and returns to where the creation remains, watching him carefully and steadfastly with the type of expression that Chirrut might think was adoration if he thought the creation capable of such an emotion. When he comes within arm’s length of it, the creation taps its own foot on the ground as though to confirm that it did, indeed, stay right where it had been told to remain.

“Yes, you did. Well done. Thank you,” Chirrut says, sticking to just sand language for now, his voice taking on much the same cadence that he remembers from the masters and guardians when he was small and they were teaching him things. As he got older and proved himself to be a bit of a problem that tone would change into something else, something harder and sterner, but he has no reason to utilize that now. He certainly does not want to frighten the creation into proving itself to be what Master Wren has deemed it and is going to call it, name it, not just on Jedha but for the whole of the universe. Monster. What a mark, he thinks, what a burden. 

He reaches out, gingerly, “May I have your hand?”

After a moment’s hesitation, the creation reaches back, and Chirrut thinks that the way it curls its fingers belies the fact that it wants to hold hands again. Instead of indulging the whim, Chirrut gently straightens its hand out so that it is flat, palm outstretched and up, the back of that hand on his own palm. He still doesn’t understand why they made the creation’s hands out of proportion. Compared to his body size, they should be larger, broader, but they fit almost perfectly within the span of his own hand, just the slightest amount hanging off. 

“Keep your hand like this, yes?” He doesn’t know what he expects really, a word, a nod, a noise, anything for confirmation? Mostly the creation just stays stills, watching him with that strangely soft expression still on its face like it doesn’t know anything else, like it doesn’t know anger or confusion or loss or pain, and he could almost believe that except he remembers the keening, the crying in the cave after he had left it alone. It surely knows pain. It surely knows sadness. What else could it know? What else could it learn?

I need to be careful with you, he thinks. You are made of lovely things. You are made lovely, and I need to keep you like that. I need to not ruin you any more than I already have. That scar across the cheek, and the scars along that body, all the ways in which it is proven that Chirrut has already neglected his duty.

The hand remains in his, and it is warm, and it feels like skin, and he remembers what it was to wake with a hand touching his face. Chirrut hesitates for long moments before steeling himself; he needs to do this, he needs to see what will happen. Raising the pitching in his other hand, he pours the water out onto the creation’s outstretched palm, lets is run over the skin in a steady stream, eyes focused on the water, trying to discern whether it becomes cloudy with clay other than the expected amount of dirt, and he rubs his thumb on the palm, trying to determine if he can feel the layers start to peel away, start to come undone. He runs out of water and hastily sets the pitcher down on the nearest surface, not even caring that it teeters close to the edge, poised to fall off at the slightest nudge. He pushes at the skin, pinches it lightly between his fingers for give, but feels nothing abnormal. It feels just as real as his own hand, full of muscle and sinew under the flesh, bones further down even though he knows, he knows what’s in there, what was in there before this happened, this miracle, this life-giving. It was made as something that would have washed away in the rain, but it is steady, and it remains. 

Even in water. 

Chirrut doesn’t know why he feels like crying with joy at the discovery, doesn’t realize that he is until there are fingers on his face, wiping at his cheek, the creation’s expression having shifted into something not unlike concern.

“No, no,” he’s quick to say, leaning back just a touch, shaking his head like he is dismayed with himself more than anything. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Then he covers the creation’s hand in both of his own. “Everything is fine.” Maybe it doesn’t know the words, maybe it just feeds off the tone in his voice, the way he says things, the way he makes his face look, but it nods along with him when he tells it that everything is fine as though it knows, as though it believes. 

Maybe it does. It is full of the Force, after all, and sometimes the Force works in mysterious ways.

With that riddle answered, Chirrut is quick to strip himself out of his filthy clothes, shedding his underrobe, his pants, his small clothes and all the other various trappings that are part of his Guardian regale onto the floor. It should be a pile of colors, dark blue, and red, and black, but it's all so caked with clay that it looks like nothing more than a small mountain of Jedhan earth, rust and ruddy. His hair is a tangled nightmare that will need to be cut, but he can at least attempt to wash the majority of the grime out, and the patchy beard on his face needs attention as well. Once he is stripped bare, his skin where it is not dingy with filth is paler than he has ever seen it from so many months spent out of the sun, he focuses his attention back on the creation. Its gaze is fixed on him, eyes almost searching, and there’s a strange moment where Chirrut feels vulnerable, seen in a way that no one has seen him. Standing naked in a room full of other people is not abnormal. It should not affect him in this way, and yet here and now he is slightly sheepish until he shakes it off and strides forward, reaching for the outer robe still hanging from the creation’s shoulders. 

The creation seems to make the connection before he gets there, though, and Chirrut pauses, watching as its fingers fumble their way through the knot in the sash around its full waist, eventually managing to pull it free. It’s a slow-motion process, but progress nonetheless as it pulls the robe off and then drops it on top of the puddle of clothing Chirrut made on the floor. Chirrut nods once when it looks at him, as though he thinks it might be seeking approval.

Then it does yet another thing he was not quite expecting. It looks at him, making another small flush catch his face and chest, before looking down at itself, as though comparing, judging. Chirrut wants to tell it that it is a wonder, but he also doesn’t want to interrupt whatever might be happening, the awakening that seems to be turning in its mind, taking it from something other than lumbering and following to appraising, thinking. 

Chirrut is thinner--much thinner and less toned than he is used to--and he is paler. He has scars from training and from just being the kid who never listened to the advice of his elders, but they are less noticeable and less utilitarian than the ones on the creation. It is obvious that the creation has been put together by the scars on the inside of its arms, the outside of its legs, the t shaped one on its chest, and Chirrut can see it find these and then look over to him for their mirror. He can see this action play out in front of him, and it hurts something deep inside of him. 

The creation extends an arm, the scar down it a pale pink against the reddish brown--Jedhan clay--of its skin. It thrusts the arm toward him, once, twice, and then makes a noise that is not keening, not crying, but questing nonetheless. Chirrut takes a step forward, extends his own arm so that it’s easier for the creation to see, to compare. He watches as it runs a finger across its scar and then over Chirrut’s skin, which sends a strange shiver down his back because how long has it been now since he’s been touched and never quite like this, this searching sort of contact. There is a question in its motion, in its face.

Chirrut swallows and tries to find his words, stutters something out that he thinks is beneath him, beneath this moment, but will do for now, until he can think of something better, until he can be certain that the creation understands. “This,” he taps the mark with his own finger, shying away from mirroring the creation’s caress, “is a scar. It’s your scar. I don’t have it. Most of the other beings here will not have it.” Technically, no one should have that exact same scar, but he knows there are beings with things similar enough to look like matches. “Scars are the stories of what happens to our bodies.” He moves his hand over to pat his chest, his arm, his leg. “This is my body.” He repeats the pats on the creation. “This is your body. Our bodies have different stories.”

The creation moves its arm, and Chirrut is very careful not to flinch in the slightest when those fingers, only slightly bigger than his own, come to rest on his chest, just over his heart. They linger there as though trying to find the beat through the darkness, through the flesh, perhaps as though trying to tell him something, but Chirrut does not yet understand the method of communication that the creation is attempting to use. Perhaps there isn’t even one, and he is ascribing more significance to these motions than he should. 

After a moment, the creation moves its hand to cover its chest over its own heart. 

“The beating under the flesh is the heart.”

It looks at him like it already knows, like he should already know something. The heart, the kyber heart, the beat he could feel long before it was fitted into the abyss of the body in front of him. Does it remember him? Is this kyber made cognizant more than the Force made flesh? Chirrut doesn’t know, has no way to find these answers other than bit by bit, little by little, studying the creation in front of him as much as possible.

“The scars don’t matter,” Chirrut says after a moment, wondering if the way the creation’s body differs from his own is worrying to it. “The scars don’t matter,” he reaches out to tap the line down the creation’s arm as he repeats it. “The heart does,” and he taps the creation’s chest in time with his words. 

In return, the creation taps Chirrut’s chest again, not an idle motion, though, no, it echoes the way that heart beats, and it steals Chirrut’s breath for a moment.

Finally, he wraps his fingers around the creation’s wrist, still slightly startled at the way he can feel the pulse point there when every logical thing in his mind screams that he shouldn’t be able to, that this shouldn’t be happening. Idly, standing there, naked, his hand on its wrist, its eyes on his face in a searching way that seems to be able to look right through him, deeper than his skin to the Force inside of him the way that the Force is inside of everything, Chirrut wonders whether all of this is just some hallucination brought on by too little sleep, too much stress, an inadequate diet, breathing in the fumes of kyber crystals and the kyber pools. Will he eventually wake up touched in the head to find all of this is just some strange dream? 

He hopes not. He really does because this is most hopeful he has managed to feel since the day they saw the plume of smoke over NiJedha from the wastes. 

“Okay,” he says, rubs a thumb over the creation’s wrist in a way that might be too gentle, too intimate a gesture considering what they are to each other, which is that Chirrut has created this thing for the temple. That gives him some sort of obligation to it, doesn’t it? To protect it? To teach it? To guide it? The thing that would make sense would be for him to feel for it the way he would for a loth kitten or a chick if it was given to him, the desire to raise and foster its growth, and yet that is not quite what stirs in his chest when he looks at the creation. He doesn’t feel anything quite so platonic, quite so pure. Too many years spent alone, he’s sure. Too many years pining after things he was never quite able to have either because they did not or could not want him back--Obi-Wan--or simply because the initial attraction turned out to be nothing more than that once he was close enough to test out the theory.

He is fast proving himself completely unworthy of this task, he knows that. Master Adair would be positively ashamed of him, he’s sure, and it’s that realization, that mental rebuke that prompts him to let go of the creation’s wrist, step back, angling his body in a mockery of privacy, nodding towards the shower itself. “We’re going to get the dirt off,” he says, walks from the entrance room into the main section, and he can hear the creation follow him, feet sliding more than lifting against the stone of the floor. When he teaches it to spar, he will try to break that habit, but he imagines that it feels like a more secure method of movement for a thing that is still less than a day old.

Chirrut does not turn as he walks under the nozzles fixed onto the walls, simply slaps his hand on two of the panels that control the spray as he walks, calling the water to life. On the surface, Jedha is a dry, arid moon. She looks inhospitable to life. She looks harsh and unforgiving and sullen, but that could not be further from the truth. Underneath the cracked dirt and the red clay and the shifting sands and the trees bent and broken from lack of moisture, she is a veritable paradise. The kyber caves that exist far below his feet traverse the expanse of the moon, unseen to all, and some of them are dry like the one where the waste Guardians live and some of them are full of small, warm pools like the one below the temple, and some of them--he has heard--are pools of rich, steaming water. Their moon is a sea moon under her crust, and the kyber, twined into every inch of rock, is what keeps everything from crumbling, keeps them all from drowning in those turbulent waters. 

Chirrut longs to see them, the kyber seas, the ones hidden in the dark places of Jedha, barely ever seen by people, known only to kyber worms and various species of lizards and whatever lives in the waters themselves. He has heard tales of kyber whales but no one knows whether that is a truth or a fiction. For himself, Chirrut isn’t positive that Jedha is large enough to produce whales, but perhaps they are smaller than the ones he read about in the archives as a boy. Those were tomes about space whales, Force whales, creatures twice as large as Jedha, capable of withstanding the crushing weight of space, the lack of atmosphere, drinking stars, their flippers moving easily around cosmic bodies. Force whales, space whales, long since died out except for the floating corpses that can be found made into way stations across the galaxy. He’s not sure of the truth in these stories, either, and ponders asking Myek the next time she returns to the temple, if she returns to the temple, but then doesn’t know why he should bother. It’s better, he thinks, standing under the spray of water, to believe in the Force whales than to see the idea of them crushed out by logic.

It’s a very different thing than something he would have thought when he was young, and Chirrut wonders why he is getting more sentimental as he grows older.

There’s a moment where he almost forgets about the Force creation as he stands under the water and lets it sluice off the first layer of grim from his skin. He forgets until he hears its footfall, feels that heartbeat like a headache behind his temple, erratic, faster than it should be, and he opens his eyes. Naked, every gloriously sculpted part of it once again on display, the Force creation stands with its hands held out, its gaze shifting from him to the water and back again dubiously and not without some modicum of concern. I’m not your chick, he thinks, if anything you are mine. Yet he doesn’t like the implication of that view of this situation, doesn’t know what would be better so just pushes it to the side and steps out from under the heavenly fall of water to draw nearer to the creation.

“It’s okay,” he says and at least he is going to get more practice in using sand language out of this experience, though he thinks it would be wise to try and teach it middle Jedhan just for the ease of facilitating conversation. As though anyone other than him is going to end up having conversations with it, with “the monster”. 

Is that what you think you can do, Chirrut, he chides himself, teach it to talk the Empire down if they come back? Have it fill their heads with pretty words and Force theory instead of taking them down with its strength, its unwavering body, its very presence. Something in another part of his brain counters, what if it could? and that shuts everything up except for him moving forward to calm it.

“This is water,” he continues, cupping his hand in the spray and then dumping it over the creation’s arm. “Just like what I poured on your hand. It was okay then, and it’s okay now. It won’t hurt you.”

The creation touches Chirrut’s chest, frowning.

Oh. “It won’t hurt me, either.” This was all a mistake, wasn’t it? Some terrible decision made by a man who never takes the time to think through his actions, just leaps at them. Perhaps Master Adair’s whole reason for this was never about protecting the temple, never about ensuring that they had a secret weapon in their midst to utilize against the Empire. Perhaps it was always about trying to teach Chirrut a lesson in patience and careful consideration. The unfortunate thing is that he wouldn’t put it past them, not really. Master Adair liked the small efforts more than the large, preferred to make their differences one person at a time instead of through a lot of them, through big gestures.

“Come on.” 

It wraps a hand around his outstretched wrist and rubs a thumb across his pulse point, an echo of his earlier motion, and it is no longer just the water that warms Chirrut’s body. 

He laughs, the sound high and awkward and careening off the wet, stone walls, bouncing around like something manic, which he is just a little bit, strung out by lack of sleep and never-ending stress. Force strike me down, he thinks even as he disentangles himself from the gentle hold and then walks around behind it, trying not to notice the attention the master artisans gave the back muscles, the waist, thick but still discernible, the curve of the ass. The curve of the ass, round, inviting, formed in a way that makes him want to rest a hand on it and more. 

Chirrut mutters a curse under his breath, trying to think of a way to let the sculptors know that they maybe didn’t need to take so much care with it, though it’s done now. The only thing he can be grateful for at the moment is that fact that his body is too tired to have more than a passing appreciation of the display, and he shakes his head, puts his palms on the creation’s back, where the muscles shift beneath his touch, seeming strong enough to lift all the mountains of Jedha, and pushes it gently until it makes a startled noise and the tone of the water changes as it stops hitting the tiles and starts hitting flesh.

The startled noise quickly turns pleased, and the next thing Chirrut knows it is turning to him--and thankfully he still possesses quick enough reflexes to step back before all sorts of things rub against each other--and dumping hands cupped full of water over his head. Dirty water falls into his eyes, but he doesn’t really care about it at the moment even as he rubs at them to remove it. He can’t quite care about the water or the slight sting of it because the creation is grinning, and it is more than a smile, it is like a sun rising on the edge of the horizon, warm and bright and all-encompassing. 

Of all the things he had imagined it doing as he held its organs in his hands, crafting them carefully, wrapping them with twine and closing seams in the clay, he never imagined it smiling at him. It suits it, the smile, and the water in Chirrut’s eyes is no longer just from the showerhead.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” he chokes out because what else is he supposed to do in the circumstance, drop to his knees and worship it, thank the Force for what? Sending them a being that he’s positive other people, other cultures would call a god, and yet his own master deems a monster. “The water is nice, isn’t it?”

The creation nods, once, like it not only understands his words but its own answer. It nods and then turns around, walks under the water, closes its eyes that way it saw Chirrut do. 

And Chirrut stands there, gaping, still not sure whether his heart is expanding or seizing or failing. 

The task of washing both himself and something that only remotely seems aware of what is happening but is interested enough in the proceedings to make it extraordinarily difficult takes much longer than Chirrut had ever considered but, eventually, it, too, is over. Eventually, he is back in his room with all the dirt washed off his skin and clean hair and while the patchy scruff of what is trying to be a beard remains on his face it at least isn’t clumped together with clay anymore. He is dressed in clean clothing for the first time in months, sprawled on his back on his bed, watching the Force creation, which is also clean, this fact only serving to make it increasingly beautiful, especially with the curling tendrils of its wet hair brushing its shoulders as it moves curiously around the edges of his room, gently examining each and every thing that it finds for an unfathomably long amount of time. If he lets it be, it will happily spend ten minutes brushing its fingers over a crack in a wall, comparing that flaw to its own scars. It’s that bit that unsettles him, that makes him think about leaping off the bed to cross the room and, what, lead it away, find it something else to do? 

He remembers something Master Adair said to him once when he was younger, in the painful spate of teenage years when he grew too tall too fast, all spindly long limbs that were not as strong as he wanted them to be yet, and his voice cracking all over itself whenever he spoke. Chirrut was crying, miserable, huddled in the reading nook by the section of books that would prove to be life-changing, when he heard the slight tap of Master Adair’s nails across the floor as they approached and Chirrut had fought down the overwhelming urge to throw a book at them and tell them to leave him alone, to let him despair in peace.

In the end, he hadn’t been able to do that, though he thought that perhaps Master Adair could scent his aggression in the air by the way they lingered, slightly out of reach. Or maybe they just weren’t completely comfortable with the idea of trying to comfort the crying whirlwind that was Chirrut Imwe. “This is all just growth, Chirrut. Our bodies shift and change as we transition from childhood to adulthood. This is the middle part, which can be the worst part in a lot of ways, but you’ll survive.”

“I hate it,” Chirrut had choked out as though putting the feeling into words would lessen the press in his chest.

One taloned hand found his head, settled there gently for a moment before pulling back, and he heard the noise that was actually Master Adair’s sigh. “Growth hurts, but it will pass. You can either grow stronger from change or resist it, become stunted, lose what could have been.”

The last thing Chirrut wanted was placating sentiment. He wanted to be angry, he wanted to punch something, he wanted someone, anyone, desperately to care. “Can it change me into something normal?” he asked, voice rough, breaking against his will.

“You’re perfectly normal for you.”

It was such a Whills thing to say that it made his teeth ache. “I don’t want that. No one likes that.”

“I do.”

Despite how much he hurt, Chirrut was able to stop himself before he could spit out the words, I don’t care about what you like, managing to switch it to, “But I want them to like it, too,” when it finally left his mouth, sad, pitiful, wounded.

Master Adair looked at him for a long moment before settling down beside him, one hand on Chirrut’s shoulder. “Someday, Chirrut, someone will love you beyond your ability to comprehend and you, them. I can guarantee that.”

It was not a comfort. Someday. Someone. Both of those felt like words very far off, things existing in other galaxies that Chirrut would never reach, futures that would never find him on Jedha. “How do you know?” he sneered. “Because the Force wills it? Because that’s the way the Force works?” Maybe it would accompany him for all of his life, but it couldn’t walk beside him, could it? It couldn’t hold his hand. It couldn’t dry his tears. It couldn’t tell him that things were okay. No, all it could do was mark him as other, outcast. He didn’t want its will at the moment, didn’t want its works.

“No,” Master Adair said and the firmness in their voice was what caught Chirrut’s attention and made him look up at them. 

“What?”

“No, I don’t know that because it’s the will of the Force or how the Force works, Chirrut. I know that because I know you, and you are a loveable person. Someone will realize that. Someone will not be frightened of your Force sense or, if they are, they will have the wherewithal to not let that scare them away. It is true that all things in the universe are loved in the Force, but a lot of the time that love is not enough love for us. We seek for other love, more present love. And I believe that you will find it.”

It should have helped him. Instead, he just sneered. “Someday.”

Clicking their tongue, Master Adair patted his shoulder once more before getting up and resuming their slow walk around the archive, always questing, always cataloging. “Someday could be as soon as tomorrow, Initiate Imwe.”

Or it could be as far off as fifty years. Or it could be never. But Chirrut couldn’t manage to catch the breath to say either of those things, just curled tighter into a desperate ball on the seat. 

“Growth hurts, Chirrut.”

Growth hurts, Chirrut, he repeats to himself, watching the creation’s slow exploration, wall crack, facial scar, wall crack, arm scar. Shutting the creation off from growth would be wrong, he knows, would make it something beneath it, beneath the miracle--for it is a miracle--that has been gifted to them by the Force. Yet that doesn’t mean he has to like watching it do this, comparing its flaws to masonry flaws, as though it were a wall instead of moving, breathing (though in a facsimile of breath or not, he is still not sure), living. No, he cannot make the growth stop but that doesn’t mean he can’t offer a hand, a balm, something.

“Hey,” he calls to it, and the creation, ever reactive to his voice, turns, head tilted, dark eyes still wet and deep like pools, the tendrils of its hair gently framing its face, the beard washed and oiled, taken care of because Chirrut was adamantly not going to let it look like something discarded. “Come here.” He gestures with a hand and then pats the small table next to his bed, unsure which of those might make more sense.

It shuffles slowly forward and then kneels down, its face so close that Chirrut instinctively leans back.

Chirrut is tired, and he should sleep. He has deserved a good long sleep. He doesn’t quite know what he’s going to do about the Force creation when he sleeps, isn’t sure if it needs sleep. 

When they came back from the shower, he had locked the door, mostly to keep it from inadvertently wandering, but part of him is worried that if he drifts off, it will get bored, break the door down and rampage through the temple. Most of him, though, is worried that it will startle everyone with its crying. 

He should sleep, but he’s resting on that precipe, that moment of being both too tired and too awake to do anything, even sleep, so he focuses on this instead, this moment, this lesson. “Do you know what you are?” It’s a big, heavy, philosophical question, and he doesn’t even mean for it to be, but the creation frowns like it knows the implication behind the words. “Beautiful,” Chirrut supplies before it can get too deep. 

The creation blinks.

Chirrut touches its face and repeats, “Beautiful.” And because Chirrut is exactly vain enough to have one, he pulls the hand mirror out of the drawer of his bedside table and holds it up for the creation to see. He can’t remember if it’s seen itself before. There was the water in the kyber caves where it might have caught a reflection and some surfaces in the temple work well for that sort of thing, too, but he isn’t sure whether it has seen its own face.

He touches its cheek, he purposely touches the scar that his carelessness created and then taps the mirror. “Beautiful.”

As though understanding the concept but not the thought behind it, the creation touches the mirror, which Chirrut wraps its fingers around to hold, and then puts it in front of Chirrut’s face, touches Chirrut’s cheek, waits.

Chirrut laughs at the obvious indication of what he thinks it means “How very Force of you,” he says, shaking his head, yawning. “I guess I’ll have to teach you how to take a compliment, too.”

It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep his eyes open, and sleep is a visitor poised at the foot of his bed, demanding his attention. The creation has settled on the floor now, mirror still in its hand, though now it has turned it back around so it can look in it more, touching its face with one hand, watching the reflection. Its back is pressed to the side of the bed, and the tattoo of its heart is a steady, familiar, comforting pulse in the Force, in Chirrut’s head. He runs a hand over its wet hair, and it leans into the touch the way a cat might. 

“Can you stay here while I sleep?” Chirrut isn’t sure if he even cares that it probably can’t understand him. He just likes talking to it. It has been a while since he’s had someone to talk to, though he does wish it could talk back. “In the room. Just stay in the room. I need.” His eyes close, his body relaxes. “I just need to sleep a bit.”

He pets its hair and focuses on the beating heart, which gleams like kyber behind his closed eyelids and pulls him away into the darkness.

***

Chirrut dreams. He doesn’t know where all his dreams take him; he never does. They rise and fall, change and move, very rarely coalesce into actual images or scenarios. It’s for this reason that Chirrut has never considered the possibility that he is a Force dreamer, able to see into the future, able to cast his mind into the stream of the Force and pull out snatches, warnings of what is to come. Most of the time, this has been a boon to him. With so much already there to set him apart from everyone else, why would he also want Force sight to make it even worse?

There are times when it would have been nice, to herald the coming of the Empire, to warn of the death of their lost cousins the Jedi, but the benefits would not have necessarily outweighed the downfalls, and who is even to say that he would have gotten notice of those events anyway. Probably, knowing his luck, he would have only been able to discern when certain meals were made in the kitchens, a singularly selfish ability.

Most of his dreams come and go, rapid, fluid, nothing. This dream is different. He has had dreams like this before, of course, all heat and hands and skin and lips. He has woken from them stiff or wet, enjoyed remembering them, but there has always been a disconnect in them. Save for one dream, but he barely recalls that at all, just the sensation, none of the details, just the sense of being loved and loving and nothing else but an aching want when he woke and it wasn’t true. This dream is like that forgotten one, that small thread of hope that made him think perhaps Master Adair’s predictions were right.

This one is also heat and skin, lips sliding across his chest, teeth worrying gently at his flesh, sucking small marks onto his stomach and hips, and a tongue that teases over his straining cock. The sensation of touching and being touched is nothing new, he has dreamed this and more before. No, the main difference, the thing that is searing is that he recognizes the eyes, he recognizes the face when it looks up at him, lips greedily slipping up the length of his cock, reddish hued hands at his hips, thumbs stroking lovingly over his skin. The contrast between their skin thrills Chirrut for some reason, makes him cant up, deeper into that mouth, which accepts him eagerly, and he can feel the suction as the cheeks hollow around him, and he twines a hand into thick, curly, dark hair, pulls, which makes them hum around his cock, throwing a whole new sensation into the mix. 

He gasps, arches, spills into the mouth, the tongue laving at him, cleaning him, swallowing his seed, the hands still gentle, gentle on his, brushing over his skin like he is precious and wanted and loved. That gesture more than the climax makes Chirrut’s eyes fill with tears in the dream, and they spill down his cheeks with just as much force as climax had hit him. Those hands, those lips slide back up his body to find his face, to brush the moisture away, to kiss the tears off.

He knows that face, traces a finger across the scar on the cheek, the scar his carelessness created.

“Beautiful,” the creation says, and Chirrut buries his face into its neck, kissing all the skin that he can find, his hands cupping its perfectly formed ass.

“Beautiful,” the creation says again, and it sounds like something deep within the womb of Jedhan shifting, rocks loosed down the side of a mountain. Just that voice is enough to make him hard again, and Chirrut forces a hand between their bodies so he can wrap his fingers around their cocks, both hard and leaking, stroking so that the creation tilts its head back, eyes closed in bliss.

“Have you ever even seen yourself?” he asks, increasing the speed of his hand, and, oh, he could die now, in this dream, in this embrace.

Those eyes are heavy, dark, wet when they find him. They are also full of an indescribable amount of love, enough that Chirrut thinks he could drown in it. “Yes, in your eyes.”

He comes. 

They come together. 

The snap of it is enough to jolt Chirrut right back into wakefulness. The first sensation he recognizes is that of a blindingly, painfully hard erection no doubt teased to life by the actions in the dream. Not just the actions, though, he has to admit to himself, but also the emotions of the dream. Those were better than anything.

The blood in his cock seems to pulse in time with the thrumming of the Force inside his head, behind his eyes, and he slips his hand under the sheets, squeezing it in an attempt to see if that will sate it. If anything, it just seems to harden, something he would have thought impossible until it occurs. It is dark, night having fallen, his room angled in such a way that no moonbeams spill in through his slit of a window. He cannot sense the weight of the Force creation by the side of the bed, isn’t sure where it might have gone, but it seems dirty and wrong to bring himself to climax with it likely still there. It’s not as though Chirrut hasn’t found release with others around. The communal sleeping arrangements of initiates meant that there wasn’t a night in his teenage years when someone in the large room wasn’t masturbating, but this is different he thinks. This is different because he dreamed of the creation, that dream directly responsible for the erection he is currently trying to will away to no avail.

He does not hear shuffling or movement. For one panicked second, he thinks that it has gotten out, wandered away, perhaps already lost to the pools in the kyber cave or the sands of the wastes, but then he hears it, small, soft breathing. It sounds like sleeping, and this makes him feel slightly bad for not putting together a bed for the creation since it is likely stretched out on a bit of the floor somewhere. He can hear it, and he can feel it, that heartbeat that is never going to fade from his consciousness. It beats in time with the pulse of blood in his cock.

It might be an action that he’s going to feel guilty about for a long time, but it feels like an action that is necessary nonetheless and not at all dangerous, really. No one will ever know. Correction, no one can ever know. What would people think of him if they knew that he was dreaming about shagging the force creation, wanking off to the idea of having been intimate with it? Actually, he’s not sure that anyone in the temple would be surprised, and that maybe makes him feel worse than the act itself.

Closing his eyes, he listens, tries to focus on making sure those breaths remain steady instead of rocking his hips into his hand, and once he is sure that the creation slumbers or whatever else it does when it is not moving, he turns his attention to himself. It’s not hard to be quiet. Chirrut perfected being quiet during this act when he was young--they all did, any who didn’t were not publicly scorned so much as simply tittered at quietly the next day and embarrassment did the work then--and he works his hand over himself but slowly. He is languid in his actions, eyes shut, thinking about the dream, Force help him.

Those lips skating across his flesh. That mouth around him. “Beautiful.” The sight of those eyes opening, deep, dark, suffused with love, love for him, is what sends him over the edge, coming on his hand, on the sheets, gasping slightly, his eyes snapping open. And, Force help him, the darkness that greets him reminds him of that gaze, sends a shiver down his back that could wake his cock back to life if it weren’t so recently spent.

Chirrut rolls out of the wet spot he created, closes his eyes, and whispers the tenets of the Whills to himself until he falls asleep again, hoping that these dreams will not be rife with strangely erotic and slightly uncomfortable scenes shared with the thing he breathed to life.


End file.
